#hospital from another attempt! this new med has made me more numb but the thoughts haven't gone away just muted. and then. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fernwehbookworm · 5 years

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Second Heart

The Past beats inside me like a Second Heart- John Banville, The Sea

A soft beeping invaded Lena's conciseness, her headache pulsing with it each time. Through a haze she groggily opened her eyes, becoming away of someone touching her. No, tucking in a blanket? Lena blinks a couple more times and her headache seems to spike harshly behind her eyes.

"Ugh, fuck…" she mumbles and tries to lift her hand to her temple but it's tugged short by something in her arm. An IV. Her sluggish mind was starting to put prices together as the harsh smell of sterilization fills her nostrils.

"Lena!" The blonde woman cries from where she just tucked a colorful, warm blanket under Lena's left leg. She reaches out towards Lena but seems to hesitate, just a moment, before pushing the call button for the Doctor. She must be the nurse checking on her. But for wha- "Ah!" Lena uses her fee hand this to grab the side of her head and squeeze her eyes shut. Don't cry. Don't you fucking cry. Luthors don't show weakness. Lena can just picture the disappointed look Lillian would give her right now. That helps her push the pain back, back behind the mask she always wears.

The blonde woman was watching her intently. The blue eyes staring into her in such a way that Lena was sure that she would burn her soul with the heat of it. Lena turns away and takes in the room. A blanket and pillow are neatly folded on the comfortable looking couch in the large hospital room. A laptop sits open with file folders and notebooks splayed out around it on the coffee table. That's not a good sign. The only person who could be here for her would be Lillian and she wouldn't be happy about being called to Metropolis in the middle of the move. This isn't good for our stocks, she can hear Lillian almost sneer. But not quite, she's too proper for a real sneer. Lena is pulled from her thoughts by she doctor entering.

"Well-" she glances at the blonde woman, she shakes her head just slightly. It's a weird interaction but Lena lets nothing show on her face. "Ms. Luthor. Welcome back to the land of the living. You had us worried there for a bit."

"I-" Lena is cut off by her own rough voice. It feels very unused and sore. She casts about for some water, which the blonde is already pouring. Lena nods as she hands it to her and takes a couple of sips.

"I am not sure what is happening right now, Doctor..."

"Doctor Natu. First, I have just a couple questions and I have to check you over. Then you can ask me questions."

Lena sighs, "Very well."

The doctor begins by asking her name.

"Lena Kiran Luthor."

"Age?"

"Twenty-four,"

"What city are we in?"

"Metropolis."

"Who is the current president?"

"President Baker."

"What year is it?"

"2019, seriously are we done yet?" Lena is getting exasperated with the questions and poking and prodding and that stupid little light that the woman is shining in her eyes. The blonde woman had excused herself when the Doctor started.

"Yes, I think so. From what I can tell, you are on your way to being completely healed."

"Doctor Natu, I suggest you start giving me some answers before I sue this hospital into giving me someone who can," Lena says sternly, but still without much emotion.

"May I sit?" She asks, gesturing to the chair next to the bed. Lena nods slightly.

"This is going to be very hard to hear Lena." Lena swallows at the use of her first name, it's to lessen the blow of whatever is coming.

"You suffered a very serious head trauma. From what we can gather, your airplane was shot from the sky, blowing a hole in the plane," the doctor is speaking softly and evenly so as not to frighten her. "You only lived because Supergirl caught you immediately, but as you were basically vacuumed out of the plane by the air pressure, the back of your head caught on the opening. Your brain began to swell from the impact and put you into a coma."

"Supergirl… wait. What plane? How long have I been out? The only plane I was going to get on was the Venture, and I had to pull out last minute."

"You've only been 'out' for six days. But due to the brain swelling, it seems you have lost a great deal of memory." The doctor says softly, picking each word with care.

"How much?" Lena whispers.

"Right now, the year is 2024. You are twenty-nine and currently living in National City, where you moved and rebranded L-Corp five years ago."

"Five…" Lena trails off and looks out the large windows at the unfamiliar skyline. How could she have lost five years of memories?

"Where's my mother? I need to speak to her." Lena almost snaps the question at the poor doctor. Surely she must have been alerted to Lena waking up.

"To the best of my knowledge, some FBI black site after her third escape attempt from the maximum-security prison."

"Nonsense. Who else would be here?" Lena gestures to the pile of stuff on the coffee table. Though now that she looks at it, it's a rather disorganized pile. One with colorful sticky notes and pens and she can see a small Pride flag stuck to the top corner of the back that faces her.

"Well, that's another big thing you seem to be missing because it happened in the past five years. That would be your wife's laptop."

"My wife!?" Lena exclaims, immediately regretting it as her headache rises with her voice. Lena clamps her eyes shut against the pain. The door bursts open at Lena's raised voice and the blonde enters the room again. Her wife enters the room again.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Concerned drips from her voice and fire burns in her eyes as she realizes the source of Lena's outburst must be the doctor.

"I was just informing Lena of her situation. She's missing about five years of time, she referred to the Venture before it exploded."

The woman seems to deflate and sadness floods her features. It makes Lena's heart hurt in an unexpected way. "So before she met me." The woman says softly.

"I'm afraid so. I would like to keep Lena just a few more days. Although the swelling has gone completely down, I would like to monitor her to see if any of her memory returns or if there was further brain damage that we weren't able to assess while she was unconscious. Physical Therapy will start tomorrow morning. Maybe try to tell her some of the major events from after she can remember. It may jog the rest of it. I'll be back to check in before I leave." Doctor Natu stands to leave.

Lena's wife holds out her hand for the doctor to shake.

"Thank you. For everything. For coming when I called. It really means a lot to me."

Doctor Natu smiles softly, "After what you did last year, how could I not? We all owe you big." The blonde woman nods and returns the smile. It's an odd moment before the doctor leaves the room and the blonde woman takes a deep breath before turning to Lena.

"If you would like to sleep, we can talk later." She says in a small voice, it's very unsure of itself and it feels odd coming from the woman. Like Lena knows she shouldn't feel this distant from her.

Lena looks into those bright blue eyes and tries to remember something, anything.

"I would like to know my wife's name if it's not too much?" And Lena knows those are the right words to say because that life is magical to her years. The woman's shoulders relax and she takes the seat the doctor vacated moments before. The woman's hand hovers over Lena's but she pulls back when she sees Lena pull away slightly.

"Right. Guess that would be a good thing to know. Seeing as you don't even remember meeting me. Man, I had always wished I had been cooler when we first met and I actually get a do-over and I'm just ramb-" she pauses at Lena's raised eyebrow before taking a deep breath. "Right. Sorry. Hi, I'm Kara Danvers. Well, now its Danvers-Luthor." The woman, Kara, sticks out a timid hand towards Lena. Lena hesitates before taking.

"Lena Luthor, though I'm guessing it's Danvers-Luthor."

Kara grins, eyes squinting in the corner as she nods. Lena's heart flutters a bit at the sight. This woman was pulling down all the walls Lena had built to protect herself. Or she already had and Lena's body was just remembering more than her brain did. It made her uncomfortable and she tried to shut it down. Kara noticed the change right away and looked at Lena with such deep concern it speared straight through her.

"I'm sorry. I should let you sleep a bit. It's only a little before nine in the morning. I need to make some phone calls anyway. I'll be just outside your door so just call out if you need anything." Kara stands and makes sure the water cup is full and in easy reach, as well as the television remote and the remote attached to the bed for her to call the nurses station. Kara shuts the blinds without being asked and turns out the light on her way. All small gestures that are so foreign to Lena that she spends the entirety of Kara's quick movements in silence until she's out the door.

It sure doesn't help the headache to think about but she is getting drowsy and the pain is numbing from the doctor adjusting her pain meds during the examination. Lena sinks back into the pillow as numbness begins to trickle in much faster now that she is no longer distracted. Sleep is easy to sink into then as the chemicals in her bloodstream do their work.

Lena sits, writing across endless documents as she travels as quickly as she can home. She's eager, that's for sure. It bubbles in her chest as the plane soars across the sky. She really is trying to focus but something keeps pulling her attention. Lena instead gets up to make herself a drink at the mini bar, it's still at least an hour until the descent and the minutes were ticking by too slowly.

She just had to go to London this past week. Of course, it was yesterday that the news came in, instead of in three days. But Lena had left early to be home when…

The sudden explosion knocks her from her feet and she hits the side of the plane as it leeches to the side. Then she's being thrown to the back as her ears pop and the plane begins to fall. Another explosion and the back of the plane is rent open and all Lena can see is the black sky as she rushes towards it. Suddenly her head explodes in pain as she hits the ceiling and a blur of red and blue fills her vision.

Lena wakes with a shout and breathing heavy. The heart monitor is going crazy and then Kara is pushing into the room, eyes wide looking for the source of distress. When she sees Lena alone and takes in her frazzled, sweaty appearance, she relaxes again. She moves to sit next to Lena and stops short of reaching out again. Faintly, it registers how hard this must be for the woman.

"It's okay. You're safe. It was just a dream. Doctor Natu said it may happen because you are still trying to process everything that happened."

Lena gulps at the air and clutches the sheets. Slowly she gets her breathing back under control and smooths her hair back from her face. Before she can even ask, Kara is holding out a hair tie for her to use.

Lena plucks it from her fingers, "Thanks." She murmurs as she scrapes the oily mess back. She really needs a shower. Lena settles back against the raised bed and tries to relax.

"What time is it?" She asks.

"Almost one. I'll page the nurse to bring you food. Dr. Natu instructed them to let you sleep." Which Kara does immediately after.

"You and the Doctor seemed close. What happened last year?"

"Nothing important right now. She's a friend of my cousin. They needed help with this group thing last minute." Lena raises an eyebrow but lets it go when the nurse deposits a tray of bland food in front of her.

"Sorry dear, we have to keep it simple and ease you back onto solid food. Tomorrow there should be some more fruit though."

Lena saved her sneer for when the nurse leaves. Still, she speers the mushy vegetables on her fork and takes a bite out of the buttered bread. Kara refills her water before taking a seat next to her. Kara is obviously actively looking anywhere but Lena.

"So," Lena starts, trying to figure out how to navigate this situation. Nothing in her Luthor training prepared her for losing her memory only to find out she is married and 'out' of the closet publicly. Also that your mother is in jail alongside your crazy brother and you have moved cities and-

"What do you do for a living? That's a lot of files." Lena gestures with her fork, trying to get a hold of her spiraling thoughts.

"Well, I'm a senior reporter for CatCo."

Lena nearly chokes on her carrot. She swallows and takes a sip of water."I married a reporter? How did that happen?"

"Well actually, I wasn't one when we met. But you kind of gave me the courage to do it."

“I did that?”

“Yeah, you did. It was probably the start of everything for us.”

Lena chews thoughtfully for a few minutes. This woman was nothing like she would have considered dating before. She was open and honest in a way Lena wasn’t used to. It also made her want to slam her walls up and not trust a word out of her mouth. What if this was all a crazy ruse by her insane brother and she wasn’t really married to this beautiful blonde woman. She could only play along to find out.

“Tell me about it then. Maybe it will help jog my memory.”

“Well, it was right after the Venture explosion, the Supers saved the plane from going down. While trying to figure out what caused it, they discovered the only empty seat was...umm… well, yours.”

“So of course the Luthor had to be the culprit.”

“It was suspicious at first, so they asked my cousin to interview you and since I was kind of at a loss of what to do with my life, he invited me along.”

“Who’s your cousin? Anyone I know?”

Kara laughs slightly and Lena realizes how silly of a question that is. She probably knew Kara’s family pretty well at this point.

“Right, I mean, five years ago. Did I know him then?”

“I’d say yes. Clark Kent, he’s my cousin.”

“Crap. A family of reporters? What was I thinking?” Lena only half teases.

“Trust me, it's not the only thing crazy about our relationship, but I’ll tell you more, later. Anyway, Clark brought me along and you were so strong and confidant. Golly, I could barely get a word out.”

Golly? Was she for real?

“Anyway, even Clark was convinced you didn’t do it then. After that, they found evidence that the bomb was planted directly under what would have been your seat. As we investigated the accident you had two more assassination attempts and… Supergirl saved you both times. And actual on the second one, your would-be assassin, had my sister at Gunpoint and you saved her. You were scared but this fire burned in your eyes like nothing I had ever seen before. All you wanted was to do good in the world but your brother was trying to have you killed.” Kara stares at Lena with an intensity that only her Luthor training keeps her from squirming.

“Clark published an article after it was all said and done. It gave you and L-Corp good press that you needed and Clark apologized for not believing you.”

Lena snorts.

“It's true, you said ‘If I can make a believer out of Clark Kent, there’s hope yet.’ Then you turned to me and asked why my name wasn’t on the by-line. I told you I wasn’t a reporter and all you said was ‘Well, you could have fooled me.’ That was it. I just knew if you believed in me, then I could do it. Which is crazy considering I had just met you. But nothing about our story is very normal.”

Kara sits back and fiddles with her glasses a bit, trying to find a way to keep going. THings with Lena hadn’t been this awkward since… well since ever. At least, in the beginning, they had so much to talk about, Kara was able to scale her wall because of the trials they went through together. Now here Kara was, at the finish line of a marathon and Lena had been transported back to the beginning.

“I think… yeah, I think I brought it with me. The article I mean. You saved it way back when and the doctor thought familiar things may help. Hold on.” Kara stands up to fast, almost knocking the chair over with a blush. Lena smiles softly before she even realizes it. This has to be real, because the way her body reacts to Kara, that couldn’t be faked. Her heart flutters with a bit of joy at her clumsiness and her lips smile as if they have done it a thousand times before. Kara Begins shifting through piles of things and it honestly amazes Lena how Kara has very much taken over the hospital room in a week's time. She has to believe Kara was basically living here at this point. She obviously had been working from here.

“Aha!” Kara exclaims, pulling out a small looking photo album from the bottom of a precarious stack of books and papers.

“You pasted it into the front of this photo album. You said it's what started our friendship so a few years ago when we assembled these things, you put it in our ‘Friend.’ album. It's the year before we finally admitted our feelings for one another. Alex likes to call it our Clueless Gay’s’ Year. Because we were so clueless.” Kara excitedly hurries back to her chair to hand the album to Lena. “Hopefully this helps. Go on. The article is in the front, and feel free to look at the pictures too.”

Lena scrutinizes Kara’s eager face before carefully opening the cover. She reads the article, but the words don’t mean much to her. It comes like a muggy memory. The bright white of her new office, Kara in a pink that matches the blush on her cheeks as she fiddles with her glasses. Lena had watched her carefully because she had trust issues, but she instantly thought that she wanted to make Kara smile like that again. She remembers feeling her stomach erupt in butterflies that she barely managed to hide by turning away and walking to her desk.

“I hope this isn’t the last time we talk.” Lena murmurs to herself.

“I hope not either.” Kara gives her almost the same smile as her memory. “You remembered.”

“A little. You were cute. You were wearing that pink blazer. And you kept avoiding my eye contact. It was cute.”

“You made me nervous, not in a ‘Luthor’ sort of way, like you used to accuse everyone of, but in the ‘Oh my Ra-gosh, I think I like women.’ Then it was a roller coaster of my sister coming out to me and working through all of that. And I didn’t want to steal her thunder, plus what if you didn’t like me, or if you were straight and then Jack came back and then Mike and-”

“Jack? Jack Spheer? Why did he come back?”

Kara gets all sad then. Lena can already guess what bad news is coming.

“He thought he cracked his nanotechnology. But really he created a deadly swarm out of himself that his CFO was controlling. When I found out I told you and you went to confront him. In the end, it was either save Jack or save… Supergirl. She had tried to come rescue you. You chose her. Because you are always sacrificing yourself for the good of everyone else. It’s one of the things that made me fall in love with you.”

“He’s… dead?”

Kara nods and Lena sits back against her pillows to take in the information. This time the memory slams into her. Jack in pain on the ground, her fist throbbing from punching the evil woman, Supergirl being suffocated by the swarm that the woman was controlling. She knew, even if she let Supergirl die, her chances of saving Jack were slim. He wasn’t really him anymore. He had sacrificed himself for science and lost. She hits the kill switch.

Lena inhales a deep breath and comes back to the present. Kara’s eyes ask the question and Lena just nods. Instead of looking at her wife, she flips the page and skims a mix of faces, some she knows and some she doesn't. Her and Kara among them along with a smattering of others. Alex, she remembers. She recognizes James Olsen too, but from her time in Metropolis.

“Great, more press.” She grumbles.

“Ah, yeah. You and James dated briefly.”

Lena visibly cringes and almost throws the book away from her.

“That’s how I felt. You admitted later that it was because of our poor communication skills. I encouraged you to go for it, along with the rest of our friends. At the time I was dealing with the heartbreak of losing someone I cared about and then having them show back up in my life. I was also suppressing a lot of feelings for you. You said it felt like we were growing apart and it was a way to stay closer to me. We both made poor decisions.”

“Why are you being so vague?”

Kara chews on her bottom lip as Lena slowly flips through the pages. The plastic protecting the pictures crinkles under her touch. She and Kara spent a lot of time together, and when they weren't looking at the camera, they were looking at each other with so much love that it almost sickened Lena, if it didn’t make her stomach flutter. She flips to the last page with a picture of her and Alex hugging Kara tightly from both sides.

A glass of whiskey set down hard cracks the frame and anger builds in Lena’s chest like a hot beast that she had chained down but now it was free. She snapped the book shut and shoves it back at the blonde woman. Kara recoils at the heat blazing in the green eyes that she hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Crap.”

“Yeah ‘Crap’”

“Lee please-”

“You lied to me! For so fucking long. And you continued lying to me just now! You’ve been lying since I woke up! ‘Oh Lena, Supergirl saved you.’ ‘Oh, Lena I helped with the investigation but you had to choose between Jack and Supergirl.’” Lena mocks her and folds arms over her chest, cringing slightly as her headache throbs with her yelling.

“Rao, I want to have this fight again. I know. I was selfish and I didn’t tell you. I told myself it was to protect you but then it became protecting myself. I was selfish because Supergirl tainted all my relationships and I didn’t want that to happen with you. So be mad. I hope that you can remember how hard we fought to get back to each other. If you can’t then I will fight all over again, because I will always fight for you Lena Luthor. Supergirl may be this city’s hero, but you are mine. You have saved me over and over again, even when you hated me, you saved me.”

Lena averts her gaze, fury still broiling in her chest. She doesn't remember everything, but this she does. She remembers Lex showing her everything before she killed him. She remembers walking into the game night with a bottle of wine, suppressing the urge to throw it at Kara. The lies stacked up and the hate simmering just below the surface. For the first time, she understood her brother’s madness and that made her hate Kara all the more.

Kara sighs and stands up. “I’m not leaving you. Shouldn’t knowing that you’re my wife give you an idea that we get past this?”

Lena remains silent and looks out the window. Kara sighs and goes back to her files. Eventually, Lena turns on the television as Kara types on her laptop. Lena can feel the tension she put between them, but until she remembers the solution to their fight, she is stuck with these feelings and these memories. Kara leaves to take a phone call and at some point, the nurse brings dinner for Lena. Kara returns with a turkey wrap for herself, apologizing that Lena can't have anything more appetizing and Lena studiously ignored her. Lena gets lost in her thoughts, searching the muddled corridors of her brain as she tries to remember anything. Suddenly the light of the bathroom clicks on and Lena is aware of how dark the room is and what it is approaching eleven o’clock. Kara returns with her pajamas on and folds down the couch to sleep on. Lena rolls over and clicks of the TV. The silence is intense and Lena and feels it settling over her like a suffocating weight.

“I love you, Lena. Even if we have to start over again, I will. I swore to you I would always be here, even if it was yourself you were afraid of. I will always protect you.” Kara whispers into the dark.

Lena falls asleep shortly after, dreaming of Kara’s arm around her as she tries so hard to hold herself together. Jack was dead and she had a strange mix of sadness and joy at Kara’s reassuring presence. Kara. Steady as a rock. Lena could let herself fall apart because Kara was there to build her back up. Kara was there when she fell apart on the balcony after Lex escaped. “You are not weak.” Kara had practically growled in her ear. That’s when Lena knew she was in love with her best friend. Not just a crush or loneliness that overtook her late at night. She was in Love.

Lena wakes slowly to the darkroom with tears damp on her cheeks. She felt so sad and angry because even on that balcony, Kara should have told her. Lena told Kara everything but Kara still didn’t tell her. Instead, she had to find out from the brother who had tried to have her killed multiple times. The brother she still tried to save, just to have him betray her again. Lena hears it then, the soft murmuring and slowly sits up to see Kara standing by the window, phone pressed to her ear. The moonlight illuminates the room and gives it a silvery-blue glow. Kara hasn’t noticed that she's awake so Lena lays back down.

“It’s just hard Alex. I know she's having nightmares. Her heart is thundering in her chest but I can’t hold her like I usually do…. Because, she's not my wife, not in her head. In her head right now she's just finding out about Supergirl and we are fighting again.... I’m hoping she remembers, the memories are coming, just slowly….. No, I can't tell her yet. It wouldn't mean anything to her.... Well yes, she'll be crushed of she remembers. No, when. When she remembers…. Yeah, I’ll let you know when we have a more definite release time. She has some physical therapy in the morning and they want to make sure she can stomach more solid foods…. I love you too, Alex. Goodnight.”

Lena tries to keep her breathing even because it's clear Kara doesn't she is awake. Soon she hears the quiet sobs of Kara crying. It breaks Lena’s heart and just as she is about to sit up she hears a siren in the distance. Then more. With a whoosh, the door opens and shuts and Kara is gone. Off to save people because she couldn’t save her wife. Lena cries herself back to sleep before Kara gets back.

The next day is tense. Lena still can’t bring herself to forgive Kara even though all her body wants is to be wrapped in her arms. Small moments keep coming back to her at the most unexpected times. Just flashes of the past five years and nothing in a particular order. Sam moving with her to National City, a date with James (cringe), a date with Kara (her cheeks hurt from smiling), helping save Sam from Reign, adopting a puppy from the shelter and Kara naming him Krypto after her lost home. Happy and sad intermingled as she went through three hours of painful stretching and walking in the physical therapy room with a very beautiful doctor that made Lena have to remind herself that she was married. She wasn’t the single woman that had woken up yesterday. It was easier now as the memories started to fall into place in her mind. But she also so clearly remembered the anger she felt for months as Kara had continued to lie to her about supergirl. It was so strong and she had no idea how her past self had gotten over it.

Kara was a steady presence throughout the whole day. She kept her distance though, trying to give Lena room to not feel pressured. But Lena kept catching Kara watching her. Making sure she was okay and not in pain. When the therapy was over and Lena had kept down a solid breakfast and lunch, the doctor said she was free to go. But go where? She had thought.

“Kara?”

“Yeah, ba-” Kara pauses and clears her throat. “Yeah, Lena?” Kara continues packing up her files and laptop before packing the duffle with their clothes in it. She had made sure Lena was in her, what she assumes was ‘her’, own pajamas and had her own blanket for her stay. Kara keeps busy but Lena knows she is very aware of everything Lena does.

“Where do we live?”

Kara pauses her work and gives Lena a soft smile. “A three-level condo at the top of a building you own. Well, I guess we own, you know the whole ‘what’s mine is yours’ marriage thing. Anyway, the rest is rent-controlled for L-Corp Employees.”

Lena remembers the big floor to ceiling windows that looked over the city, walking distance to the visible L-Corp building so she and her employees could either walk or ride to work, or even carpool, as one of her green initiatives for the company. Lena nods slowly and Kara can tell she remembered something. Maybe all this would take is gentle reminders here and there for Lena’s memory to come back. Getting her home would help also, at least that’s what the doctor said.

By three o'clock Lena s being rolled to the entrance in a wheelchair as Kara pulls the car upfront. Cameras flash at the entrance but Kara had hired a private security team to hold them back. Lena is glad she was able to at least put on jeans and one of Kara’s old sweatshirts instead of the pajamas. Kara pulls up in a car that looks remarkably similar to one Lena had drawn up last year, no wait, six years ago? Before she took over LexCorp. She had a suspicion it was her design which meant it was entirely electric and it made her happy to see something she had dreamed up had become a reality. There was probably much more but she was still reconciling memories to reality.

Kara helped her into the car with as little touching as possible while ignoring the shouted questions of the press. Kara had informed her earlier that Jess, her former assistant, now interim CEO and part-owner of L-Corp, had already made a statement that Lena had lost her memory due to the head injury but was quickly recovering both physically and mentally. She announced that Lena would be taking a temporary leave of absence but with full intentions of returning in two months time. Lena was relieved to know she hadn't just dreamed of promoting her loyal friend and confidant.

Kara drove her to a semi-familiar building and quietly led her up the elevator. She pressed the highest number and held her thumb to the button while it scanned her thumbprint and the light turned green. "Extra security," Kara mumbled. The elevator let out to a hallway with a single door. Kara input a password on the keypad and then placed her hand on a scanner beside the door and it also turned green. Lena remembers having it installed after a crazy stalker of Kara's had broken into their apartment and waited for them to get home. He wanted to take Kara’s brain for himself, or something just as crazy. Too bad he didn’t count on dealing with Supergirl and a Luthor.

Kara opens the door and ushers Lena in. Kara was watching Lena carefully and could see how that trip from the car as wearing on her. Kara planned to get Lena in bed straight away and make her favorite tea. She helps Lena to the couch while she takes their bags to the bedroom and unpacks. Lena looks around and takes in the space.

Memory after memory begins to trickle in as she takes in the pictures on the walls and the knick-knacks tucked between books on the shelves. The blanket Eliza made for them on the couch. The toy chest Alex made during her woodworking phase two years ago. The toy chest? Why did they need a toy chest?

Lena’s world crashes down on her then. She picks up the soft blue blanket and sees the little Danvers-Luthor stitched into it next to a green rattle. Lena runs her fingers over Eliza’s neat stitching and tears are already rolling down her cheeks. She remembers now.

She and Kara had tried the DEO’s experimental technology to use Kara’s DNA to merge with hers to create a child but it was still too early, even with Lena’s brain helping it was too expensive to keep trying after several failed attempts. They talked about an anonymous donor but Kara couldn’t carry the child and if Lena was honest, she didn’t want to have a baby with anyone but Kara. That left adoption. It also led to fights. Lena and Kara had such different experiences in their own lives. Lena was convinced it wouldn’t go well. In the end, Kara convinced her it was Lena’s chance to do better and Kara’s chance to share the love she was given.

After a year of waiting and paperwork and background checks, they just had to wait for a child to be matched with them. But that could take any time from three days to three months. Lena couldn’t cancel her trip to Hong Kong. The Opening of the L-Corp office there had been planned for three years. It seemed safe enough to just go for a week. Until Lena got a call on her third day from Kara that the Social worker was going to be coming in two days with a potential match. Lena immediately canceled her meetings and had the tech crew get her plane ready. It was self-flying and solar-powered, she just wanted it powered up by the time she got to the airfield. She smiled now at the time she and Kara flew to Katznia to confront Lex on an earlier model. It had taken a long time to get over but the lengths Lena went to protect Kara was comical.

But what happened to the one-year-old that had lost its parents in a car crash? What happened to that little brown-haired, blue-eyed baby girl? A sob racks Lena’s chest because now she remembers everything. She crushes the blanket to her chest and hunches over her knees.

She remembers the fights and the makeups. The 'I love you’s' and flowers and forehead kisses. The tension had built after the Supergirl confrontation to the point that they had a screaming match but then suddenly Kara was kissing her and Lena was pulling that stupid cape off. Right there in her office at three in the morning.

Lena was on her way home, almost there, when her plane was shot out of the sky and Kara was there to protect her, just like she always was.

Kara rushed in at the sound of Lena’s crying, taking in the blue blanket in her white-knuckled grasp. Suddenly Kara is cooing in her ear and her strong arms pull Lena back together from where she was breaking in half with her heart. They lost another child. Another chance at a family.

“Shhh… my love. It's okay. It’s okay. Madison went to another loving family. Oh, Lee. We will get another chance. This isn't the end. So many children out there need love” Kara continues reassuring her until Lena can manage to even out her breathing.

“What happened?”

“They didn’t have the funding to wait to place her, and with you, in the hospital, we couldn’t prove to be a suitable home. The woman understood and told me to call her when we were ready again. We won’t have to start over.”

“But I wasn’t here! How did you even handle this on your own?”

Kara cringes. She handled it about as well as Lena was. She fell down right in the entryway, clutching the blanket as the Social Worker carried the baby away. She sobbed until she lost track of time and cried because she should have been at the hospital for her wife. Instead of saying all that she swallows.

“I cried. But I had you to worry about. You are my priority, Lena.”

Lena nestles into Kara, exhausted and just wanting to sleep. Kara’s warm hands rub up and down her arm as Lena cries softly.

“So I take it you’re not mad at me anymore?” Kara asks. Lena laughs wetly and rubs under her nose and her cheeks.

“No. No, I remembered everything.”

“Everything?” Kara teases, Lena elbows her softly.

“Yes, everything. But can I have some tea? This has been a rough forty-eight hours. And my head still hurts.”

Kara laughs a real laugh that is music to Lena’s ears.

“Yeah tell me about it. Come on. I got pretty far ahead on work over the past couple of days, so I took the next two weeks off. Just you and me. And several pints of ice cream to cry this out.” Kara moves to stand up, Lena grips her arm and holds her down. Kara’s forehead crinkles in the very way Lena missed. It felt like she had relieved the past five years and that this huge gulf had separated her from today and just two weeks ago when she had left on her trip.

“I love you. So much. Even when I didn’t know you, you kept all of our memories safe and brought me back to you. You kept all of your vows to me and made me love you even when I was angry. I know this was a setback, and it's going to be hard. You, Kara Danvers-Luthor, are my hero.”

“I will always protect you.”

They sat like that for a few minutes before curiosity overcame Lena.

“What happened to whoever shot my plane?”

“They may or may not have spent the night in the DEO sensory deprivation chamber. Not the goon that was hired but the rival CEO. Frank Chang, I think? The American born son of the former CEO in Hong Kong that you were competing with. Alex dealt with him after that. I was a little too angry to pay much attention other than taking him on the scariest flight of his life.” Lena chuckles at her wife's antics.

“And how were you there? When the plane exploded?”

“I was too amped up so I thought I’d fly along and make sure you got home safe. I just got distracted by…” Kara trails off.

“By what?” Lena arches an eyebrow.

“By what I wanted to do to you as soon as the plane landed.” Kara blushes and Lena thinks its cute, even after all these years. “I was really excited and… umm… well… a bit horny after so long without you.

Its Lena’s turn to laugh out loud and Kara delights in it. “Soon, my love. Soon. You can give me an idea once I’ve been cleared by the doctor. For now, take me to bed and cuddle me?” Lena asks.

“As you wish,” Kara smirks.

“Rao, You watched it again didn’t you?” Lena asks

“Well, how else am I supposed to protest that stupid remake?” Kara exclaims. Lena just rolls her eyes as Kara sweeps her into a bridal style carry with ease.

“All right Dread Pirate. Just don’t let the Rodents of Unusual Size get me.”

“As you wish.”

#supergirl #supercorp #fanfiction #memory loss #married #kara danvers #lena luthor #angst #Happy Ending #OneShots

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carafinn · 7 years

Text

Coming Home Again

pairings: katsuki yuuri/ victor nikiforov word count: ~10k

Yuuri, given to periodic bouts of paranoia, would often wonder if Viktor is, in fact, a Russian drug lord on the loose, seeking refuge in a nondescript town in America. This would explain a manner of things: his evasiveness whenever probed about his job; the way he’d unpredictably throw out incisive, thoughtful commentary about the morning news over breakfast; his expensive tastes in shirts, watches, and wallets alike; why he’d want to stay here with Yuuri, of all places, when the contents his wardrobe alone could probably afford him a year-long stay at any condominium of his choice in the trendiest part of town.

And <i>then</i> he goes on to discover that Viktor actually has a premium account on club penguin, and that his five penguins are named Peanut Wigglebutt, Luke skyhopper, Zing Zing, Otto Von Longdong, and Mooshoo Vegetable, and beats the idea to death in his head.

also on ao3.

Zandile, you do not need saving. Only reminding of who you are.

Tapiwa Mugabe, Zimbabwe

Katsuki Yuuri spends the first twelve hours of his twenty-third birthday wedged uncomfortably between a crying infant and a burly man who has no concept of personal space whatsoever, hovering some forty thousand feet above the North Atlantic Ocean, midway between Moscow and Detroit.

It’s a shame, really, because Yuuri usually likes being on a flight; he finds the experience soothing, if not enjoyable: the engine’s low constant hum, the endless expanse of cloud and sky, and the idea that he’s suspended in between some indefinite time and space, which is about the closest one can get to detaching oneself from reality. It’s… a refreshing change.

Not that Yuuri is in desperate need of escapism, or anything of the sort. Yuuri’s twenty-three and healthy and able-bodied, he’s in his final--final!--year of medical school, and he’s juggling two part-time jobs to pay his rent but he’s not living on the streets either. If anything, he’s just attended his second medical conference of the year in Moscow, presented his poster (“Relationship between Helicobacter Pylori eradication in chronic peptic ulcer disease and MALT lymphoma: A Review”)--a culmination of six months of crunching data, more coffee than is humanly fathomable (and stomach-able), and, ironically enough, three stomach ulcers--to a bunch of eminent professionals, received a glowing letter of recommendation complete with rainbows and unicorns and the like from his mentor, and a sizeable research grant for his next project. He’s interning in one of the most reputable teaching hospitals in his nation. It’s just...

Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut; he has to report back to hospital by 11AM the next day, which leaves him with barely enough time to touch down, cab home, dump his luggage in his house, wash up, eat his first meal in twenty-four hours, and rush to the hospital (washing and eating optional.) This in turn leaves him with exactly three hours and thirty-two minutes of sleep, and no time for self-indulgent, whimsical bouts of self-pity.

“Happy birthday, Yuuri,” he murmurs to himself; the statement is entirely devoid of irony and self-pity. It’s pretty depressing, as far as birthdays go, but Yuuri has spent his twenty-second birthday working a twelve hour shift in 7-11 and his twenty-first in a dingy lab clawing his way through three hundred pages of data, so it’s not like he has any semblance of a birthday tradition to uphold, anyway.

This is how Katsuki Yuuri spends the first twelve hours of his twenty-third birthday drifting fitfully in and out of sleep. As it turns out, it’s the better half of his birthday.

“If there is any medical doctor on board, please make yourself known to cabin crew as soon as possible.”

It’s a bad dream, Yuuri tells himself. It’s probably a culmination of the stress from work, the harrowing wails of the baby next to him, and some repressed childhood phobia of flying, from all the times Mari-nee-chan picked him up when they were kids and pretended to fly him like an airplane. He should probably go back to sleep.

“Attention all passengers: if there is any medical doctor on board, please make yourself known to cabin crew as soon as possible.”

On his left, the baby stirs and lets out a wail reminiscent of a pterodactyl being fed into a mixing truck. The man on his right is likewise jolted awake by the sudden commotion, and almost smashes his skull into Yuuri’s face in the process.

It’s okay, Yuuri tells himself, trying to quell the queasiness that’s stirring in the pits of his stomach. It’s okay. He’s just a student. A final year student with less than eight months to being a doctor in name, but still a student. It’s not his duty--it’s not even his right--to stand up and declare himself. He isn’t even legally covered by a practicing insurance, and if anything goes wrong his career would’ve ended even before it’d started.

The message is repeated thrice, then stops. Yuuri allows himself a moment of relief. There are four hundred-odd passengers on the plane; statistically speaking, surely someone there is a doctor.

“Would all medical doctors please identify yourself to the cabin crew immediately.”

There’s a heightened tone of urgency in the new message, and before Yuuri’s mind even registers what he’s doing, he’s made his way to the nearest flight attendant hovering anxiously along the aisle.

“I’m a doctor-in-training,” Yuuri tells her. “If there isn’t another doctor on board, I could help.”

The flight attendant’s panic-stricken face gives way to visible relief, which confirms Yuuri’s worst fear: he’s probably the one best equipped to handle the emergency amongst everyone on the plane, a thought that is terrifying on a hundred different levels. He’s led by the attendant--and the interested gaze of about a hundred passengers--into the first class cabin, where a commotion is taking place at the end of the aisle. An elderly man is having a seizure on the floor; his arms and legs are jerking, his eyes are rolled upwards towards the ceiling, and he’s frothing at the mouth.

Yuuri walks in just in time to stop a well-meaning passenger from stuffing a piece of handkerchief into the man’s mouth.

“You can’t put anything into his mouth or he’ll choke,” Yuuri tells the baffled man. He’s moving on pure instinct, mind-numbing fear giving way to the memory of countless hours spent in the ER. “I’m gonna need you to turn him to his side--on a count of three--”

Yuuri takes a few seconds to assess the man: he’s having a seizure, but he doesn’t appear to be cyanosed, his pulse is strong, and his skin is not feverish to touch.

“How long has he been seizing?” Yuuri asks the flight attendant, who returns his question with a blank look.

“He’s been shaking away intermittently for the past fifteen minutes or so,” a young man--a foreigner--next to Yuuri offers. “I was sitting next to him when he started to shake.”

“We need to give him oxygen right now,” Yuuri says, voice coming out all hoarse and choked but it doesn't matter so long as he gets things done. “Can someone get me a blood pressure set, and a pulse oximeter. And, um, a thermometer. And you,” Yuuri says, turning to the foreigner, “look through the guy’s bag for any pills or tablets or any meds you can find.”

The next few minutes play out like hours. Yuuri holds the man down by his side, praying fervently that the seizure will spontaneously abort. The man’s shaking and shaking and it feels like it’ll never end, he’s foaming and spitting out flecks of drool onto Yuuri’s shirt and all over his pants, and his lips are turning purplish-blue. It’s like the recurrent nightmares Yuuri’s been having over the past year, nightmares of people dying on him, except this isn’t a dream, isn’t it, this is a man whose flesh feels warm and horribly real under Yuuri’s fingers, all slick sweat and throbbing pulse and--

“I found his medication bag!” The foreigner announces, as he squeezes through the crowd and dumps a small Ziploc bag into Yuuri’s arms. Yuuri hastily shakes the contents out of the bag: a few tablets of aspirin, some antibiotics, and an insulin syringe.

“He's on insulin,” Yuuri says aloud, horrified. “Someone pass me a glucose meter.”

The flight attendant comes back with a huge box of medical supplies, fishes out a glucose meter and pricks the man’s fingers. Within seconds, numbers flash on the screen: 1.3. The guy’s blood sugar is dangerously low, and the only way to remedy that is to gain venous access and push the dextrose solution into the man’s veins. Yuuri’s heart sinks at the prospect of setting a plug on someone who is having an active seizure.

He prepares the needles, staunchly ignoring the way his hands are trembling so obviously that they’re probably shaking harder than the elderly man himself. He waits for the flight attendant to hold the man down, takes a deep breath, and slides the needle into the man’s arms. It takes a few seconds, but blood trickles out of the cannula, which means that he’d hit the target. He flushes the dextrose into the vein, and waits with bated breath.

When the man finally stops seizing a minute later, Yuuri almost faints from the surge of relief.

The next two hours pass in a blur. The plane makes an emergency landing at a nearby airport, and the patient is attended to immediately by a group of doctors and nurses armed with a bag of medical supplies. Yuuri is thanked profusely and effusively: first by the medical team, then by the flight attendants, then by the pilot himself. By then, he’s entered such a profound state of numb shock that he doesn’t really register what they’re saying, and before he knows it he’s been shepherded to his newly upgraded business class seat, as a gesture of thanks from the cabin crew.

He’s so out of it that it takes him thirty seconds to register that the man in his neighbouring seat is attempting to strike up a conversation, that there are actual words coming out of him, and he’s not just opening and closing his mouth for the fun of it. It takes him another thirty seconds to realise that the stranger is, in fact, the foreigner who’d helped him find the Ziploc bag of medications earlier.

“…and you looked so pale you were practically translucent and your hands were shaking so badly but you actually got the needle into his veins, amazing--“

“I sorry, what,sorry?” Yuuri says.

The stranger grins at him. Yuuri has about ten functioning brain cells left after the traumatic ordeal, give or take three, but he vaguely registers that the stranger is--striking. Floppy hair, piercing green eyes. His features are delicate and well-defined; illuminated by the dim cabin light, his side profile seems almost elfin-like.

“I said, you were practically shitting your pants back there,” the stranger informs him, cheerfully. “I’m Viktor; what’s your name?”

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Yuuri says, just as the flight attendant approaches Yuuri with a menu in her hand.

“Would you like a drink, sir?” She asks Yuuri, eyes widening ever-so-slightly, as if she were--god forbid--in awe of him.

“I, coffee, I mean, coffee would be nice, thanks.” Yuuri’s state of petrification from the earlier excitement inexplicably gives way to complete and utter exhaustion; he's so very tired.

On second thought, though, coffee's probably not going to cut it. Yuuri changes his mind just as the flight attendant is walking back to the trolley, raises his arms and says: “Actually, um, do you serve alcoholic beverages here?”

This is how, an hour and a few drinks later, Yuuri decides that it is absolutely vital that he pours out the entire sob story of his twenty-third birthday to Viktor, no details spared.

“You know what I like about my birthday? Nothing,” Yuuri says, swinging his arm for emphasis. “I mean, like, I’m not even asking for a cake or a present or a party here, I just want to go home and shower, and sleep, and not freak out about accidentally killing someone, is that too much to ask?”

“No, not at all,” Viktor agrees, sounding very amicable. Yuuri likes him already.

“I get nightmares about these things all the time. About being a shit doctor,” Yuuri continues, because Viktor’s nodding like he’s actually interested in what Yuuri has to say. “It’s awful. Phichit says it’s the coffee…”

Now that he's started, Yuuri decides that he doesn't actually want to stop. Why should he? The Viktor guy looks plenty interested, and hell, Yuuri deserves this. It's his birthday, cut him some slack, let this poor guy whine a little. “…I love coffee. I would give it to myself through an IV drip if I could…”

“…Phichit’s my ex-roommate… he’s on a year-long exchange trip to Beijing University…”

“…Miss him so much, and the landlady’s jacked up the rent price thrice because I can’t find a roommate to replace him…”

“…I like your face… it’s a really nice face…”

“…not a single restaurant in Detroit that serves decent katsudon!... they… they even screw up rice, I mean how do you do it, how do you screw up rice, you have to actually put in effort to screw up something like rice…”

“…do you know how many bowls of katsudons my school fees can… can buy me? I’ll give you a hint, the answer is, like, five digits…”

“…happy birthday to me… happy birthday to me… happy birthday to Yuuri…”

“…hope the man survives… I really hope he does… oh god…”

“…was so scared… I really thought I was going to kill him…”

“…shouldn’t have come… didn’t want to attend the conference… but they said the trip would be subsidised…”

“…Phichit’s Instagram is great… but there’s a video of me… chased by geese… in park… not great…”

“…would skank a baby for some decent katsudon…”

“…lost my first kiss to my grandfather’s parrot… truth or dare with my cousins…”

“…hate public speaking… when I speak to crowd… imagine everyone around me is a katsudon…”

“…Vicchan… vet said it was a bad infection… cried for weeks… didn’t even get to…”

“…seriously…how do you… face…so well…”

The plane lurches. Yuuri’s head jerks at the abrupt movement and he looks out of the window, only to see rows after rows of neon orange light lined along the edges of an airport runway.

“Ladies and gentleman,” comes the flight attendant’s pleasant voice through the PA system, which registers as a vague, distant echo in Yuuri’s mind, “We have arrived at our destination. The time in Detroit is 5.16 AM and the weather forecast for today is….”

Very, very slowly, Yuuri turns his head back from the window to Viktor.

Who is looking at him. Very intently, with the slightest hint of an--amused? Bemused?--smile on his face.

Yuuri opens his mouth, tries to speak--

-and then he gags and empties the entire content of his stomach onto his own lap.

Yuuri doesn’t remember much of his trip back to his apartment, except that he is half-led, half-dragged by Viktor through immigration, through the airport, and into a cab. He gives his address to the driver after some prompting, and before he knows it he’s at the lift lobby of his apartment, flanked between his puke-stained luggage and--he’s seized by a sudden pang of mortification--an amused looking Viktor.

By then the amount of alcohol circulating in his blood has reduced to a level low enough for him to arrive at the following realisations:

He’d just spent three hours on a plane ride blathering like a an idiot to a complete stranger; and

said stranger is ridiculously attractive; and

oh god, is that his own puke on the guy’s shirt?

once he sobers up, there will probably not be a lake deep enough in all of America for him to fling himself into.

“I, I’ll manage from here,” Yuuri says, hastily. His head is pounding. “Thank you--thank you so much--I’m deeply sorry--“

Mercifully, the lift door opens, and Yuuri takes a deep bow, spends a few seconds trying to re-orientate his poor, throbbing head, and makes a dash for it. He isn’t proud of himself, he really isn’t, but if Viktor follows him and witnesses the utter state of disarray that is his apartment, he will become the first person in the history of medicine to literally die from embarrassment. They’ll probably name the condition after him, the Katsuki Yuuri syndrome, and his family name will be sullied forever and it’ll be all his fault-

Yuuri drags himself through his door, collapses onto his sofa, and lets the day’s exhaustion and horror give way to eight blissful hours of sleep.

Yuuri wakes up to a massive hangover, five voicemails from home, two missed calls from Otabek (his classmate back in hospital), and thirty messages from Phichit, which starts off as a string of birthday related emojis that quickly descends into increasingly worried messages asking after Yuuri’s whereabouts.

Hey, he texts Phichit, and within two seconds his phone is ringing.

“YUURI KATSUKI,” booms Phichit’s voice from the other side of the line, which is about five thousand decibels too loud, and Yuuri almost rolls off the sofa in shock.

“Please don’t do that,” he whimpers feebly into the phone.

“YOUR PLANE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE LANDED FIFTEEN HOURS AGO,” Phichit continues, unrepentant. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO BIRTHDAY SKYPE YOU-“

Phichit, who’d been worried that Yuuri would spend his entire birthday alone eating canned soup in the medical library, had forced Yuuri to promise to birthday skype him before the day ended. Yuuri is seized by a wave of guilt, which quickly transforms into horror as the events of the past night floods back into his mind. He lets out a groan and buries his face into the sofa.

“YUURI-”

“There was… there was a delay on my flight.” Yuuri takes a deep breath. “Someone had a seizure and I had to attend to him and it was--it was awful, Phichit, I thought he was going to die,” Yuuri says, and he’s beyond mollified talking about last night’s events aloud, but Phichit deserves to know. “I--he didn’t die in the end, he’s safe now, thank god, but I freaked out really badly and got drunk on the plane and someone had to help bring me home.”

There’s silence on the line for about ten seconds. Yuuri realises, with a fresh pang of guilt, that it’s late afternoon in Detroit, which means it’s probably 3AM in Beijing, where Phichit is. And Phichit really, really doesn’t deserve this.

“I mean--it’s fine, I’m okay now, just a little hungover but that’s--“

“Yuuri.” Phichit’s voice is kinder now, almost soft, and Yuuri refuses to cry. Refuses. “That must’ve been awful.”

“I mean--yeah, it was, but it’s okay,” Yuuri says, and staunchly ignores how hollow his voice sounds in his empty apartment. “I--I just don’t want to think about it now.”

“I’ve got something for you to take your mind off things,” Phichit offers cheerfully, after a moment’s silence. Yuuri can almost hear the grin in his voice. “Why don’t you take a look at your Instagram?”

Yuuri spends the next fifteen minutes scrolling through the series of photos Phichit has uploaded on Instagram starring Yuuri, captioned with effusive birthday messages, each more enthusiastic than the last. Yuuri finds it in him to laugh in spite of everything, in spite of yesterday’s tragic series of events. He likes every single photo, even the candid ones, and the ones where he’s looking at the camera but smiling funny. He ends up feeling... well, not good, but at least alright, for the rest of what would otherwise have been an intolerable day.

Yuuri doesn’t think about Viktor for the rest of the week.

It’s not that he’s in denial, or anything--he’s got a ton of schoolwork to catch up on, journal articles to read, and an ever-growing mountain of laundry waiting for him underneath the mouldy kitchen sink. More important is the particular mindset Yuuri has learned to adopt with regard to his drunken escapades: there’s the drunk, effervescent, sociable Yuuri who weeps unabashedly into the arms of complete strangers and makes friends with anything that so much as crawls; then there’s the sober Yuuri, who stammers when he talks to the mailman and who never gets his pizza order right the first time. As far as sober Yuuri is concerned, drunk Yuuri is another entity altogether, a completely distinct persona whose character is so unfathomable and farfetched from Yuuri's that it would be like contemplating the existence of an alien.

Okay, so maybe he’s a little in denial. Just a little.

The point is, Yuuri might be socially inept but he isn’t socially oblivious. He’s been brought up to be courteous and considerate and to do decent-human-being things like give up his seat to pregnant women on the bus. He knows that sobbing about his entire life story for three hours and throwing up on a complete stranger and then having said stranger bring him back home is so far beyond the line of what is socially acceptable, he might as well have declared himself a pariah and admitted to being raised by a pack of wolves. Which is why Yuuri’s only option is to either melt from the shame into a puddle of shapeless Yuuri-flavoured goo, or try really, really hard not to think about it so that he can put the massive embarrassment behind him and move on with his life.

The result of his extreme denial is that when Viktor actually shows up at his doorstep two weeks later with three large suitcases in tow, Yuuri’s first response is to dismiss him as a terrible hallucination that is both the by-product of his guilty conscience and too little sleep. And then shut the door in Viktor’s face.

His first thought is: I need to sleep.

His second thought is: a figment of my imagination shouldn’t be able to hammer on the door like that.

The hammering continues for thirty seconds, followed by radio silence. When Yuuri opens the door again, he finds Viktor rearranging Yuuri’s shoe rack.

“What are you doing,” Yuuri splutters.

“Putting my shoes on the shoe rack,” Viktor says, cheerfully. “I’ve got a bad back, so I’ll be taking the top row. I hope you won’t mind?”

“I,” Yuuri says.

“I even brought us dinner! And drinks! We need to celebrate our first night together as housemates.”

“You housemate,” Yuuri says. Eloquence being one of his many talents.

“Didn’t your landlady tell you?” Viktor beams at him, and this is all Yuuri’s fault because he’s been avoiding the landlady’s calls like the plague. “I’m going to be your new housemate.”

Viktor… is a disaster.

A correction: Viktor himself isn’t a disaster. He’s more put together than Yuuri can ever hope to be; the fire hydrant outside Yuuri’s apartment is more put together than Yuuri can ever hope to be. The point being, Viktor isn’t a disaster but the fact that he should suddenly be involved in Yuuri’s life, living together with him as a roommate, is.

Viktor knows everything about Yuuri: from his rocky financial status; to his deepest, darkest, most guarded fears that no one else is privy to, not even Phichit; to the name of his first dog.

All Yuuri knows about Viktor, one hour into their--disastrous!--second meeting, is that Viktor wears size eight shoes and has a penchant for talking in superlatives and eats a lot. He steadily makes his way through three servings of store-bought spaghetti; across the table, Yuuri woodenly shoves pasta into his mouth, so distracted that he almost misses and hits his nose with the fork three times.

And then Viktor announces that he will be his housemate for six months. Again, a recipe for unmitigated disaster! Yuuri notices, not without a fresh wave of alarm, that his life will soon feature heavily in 1. Viktor and 2. disasters.

“I was just looking for a place to stay in Detroit to take a break from work and… settle some other stuff,” Viktor says. “Then we were on that flight together, and you told me that you were looking for a roommate! What luck! What serendipity!”

What a nightmare, Yuuri thinks, but barely refrains from saying.

After dinner, Yuuri does the dishes in a daze. He shows Viktor around the house, teaches him how to work the heater and washing machine, and offers to bring Viktor around the neighbourhood over the next few days. After that, upon Viktor’s insistence, they sit at the balcony and sip sweet potato shochu. It’s all very surreal.

“I look forward to living with you~” Viktor hums, faced flushed pink with alcohol, which throws Yuuri off for a moment. It’s not that Yuuri thinks of himself as some ogre who deserves to have eggs thrown at him, of course; Yuuri is a considerate housemate, and, when given the choice, will always go out of his way to avoid imposing on others. He just finds it unfathomable that the promise of his company should incite anything other than a lukewarm response from anybody. But Viktor seems so genuinely happy, and so contented, that Yuuri just smiles shyly, if a little hesitantly, and nods.

And that’s that.

Viktor, Yuuri decides a few weeks later, isn’t so much mysterious as he is plain unpredictable. There is no pattern to his actions; his thought process, erratic and wildly interesting, is not so much a puzzle as it is plain puzzling. He’d insist on having lunch together with Yuuri, whine like a petulant baby until Yuuri concedes, then go on to offer incisive, thoughtful advice whenever Yuuri brings up school related problems over a meal. He has a habit of scribbling random phrases in Russian that Yuuri does not understand, over whatever scrap pieces of paper he can lay his hands on: the back of grocery lists, bits of paper napkins, and drug store receipts. When asked, he’d claim that he was collecting inspiration for his work, but proceed to make no further comment as to what sort of work it is. He’d pen his thoughts down as and when inspiration strikes, and then absentmindedly leave them in ridiculous places: next to a bunch of carrots in the fridge, stuck onto the toilet mirror with congealed toothpaste, and in Yuuri’s bathroom slippers. He’d shed silvery hair all over the sofa and whine and bitch endlessly about having to clean it up, and then willingly whip up scrumptious seven course dinners at random, for no reason other than to “celebrate our eighty-ninth day as roommates together.”

For better or for worse, Viktor’s arrival changes everything.

In a way, it’s to be expected. Before Viktor it’d been Phichit, and before Phichit Yuuri had been living alone during his freshmen year of college. Then Phichit’d moved in, which changed everything. Yuuri thinks that he would never exchange his memories with Phichit for anything in the world--the late night horror movie marathons; the tureens of impossibly spicy Thai curry they’d slurp when winter drew nearer and the nights grew colder; being coerced into doing straight-out illegal things like breaking into old, abandoned warehouses and getting chased around by wild dogs ‘for the gram’. Phichit would gaze at Yuuri with this doe-eyed, pleading look--and Yuuri, dammit, was weak to the pleading look--and say things like, “you gotta visit this cafe with me, Yuuri, they’ve got the cutest latte art that needs to be on my Instagram”, or “I heard they just erected this huge statue of a three-headed giraffe in the park, I’m begging you to please just leave the med library for one hour and help me take a photo with it--”

Viktor, however, is different. Viktor isn’t so much concerned about letting Yuuri into his life as he is about getting into Yuuri’s life, which baffles Yuuri thoroughly. He’d pester Yuuri with questions about his favourite band, his day at work, his view on whether there is more than one correct way of eating a chocolate cupcake, and if the colour orange is grossly underrated. He is utterly shameless about pleading, wheedling, and--when push comes to shove--coercing Yuuri into spending time together. Rather than being put-off after the whole incidence on the plane, Viktor seems to be perversely interested in gathering even more useless information about Yuuri’s life, down to every small, horrifying detail.

It scares Yuuri at first--not so much the interest in itself, but the terrible queasiness in his gut telling him that surely Viktor will get bored of him. Surely his interest will tire eventually. Stories of his patients might be interesting the first, or second, or third time, but eventually it’s going to end up being the same old. And so Yuuri braces himself, over and over, for an inevitability that doesn’t come.

It takes Yuuri a while to get used to it, to volunteer details about his day without being prompted to. It takes him many, many weeks to stop peering up from his rice bowl every so often, to check and see if Viktor’s still listening to him (and realise with no small degree of shock that Viktor is, he always is.) The stories roll off is tongue: haltingly at first, then with increasing ease and comfort as the days go by. He finds his fear slowly being replaced by a small, tentative sort of hope, the kind that makes him want to notice and remember things he’d never have otherwise given much attention to: a sprig of wildflowers peering through the cracked pavements lining the entrance of his school campus; the hilarious mannerisms of the ward clerk in the paediatric unit; an interesting conversation between two parrot owners that he overheads on the train ride home.

Autumn passes before Yuuri realises; winter comes, and then spring, the days curving gently into a long, winding road.

Curiously enough: for all his enthusiastic recollections of his childhood in Russia, Viktor is uncharacteristically reticent about the details of whatever job he had prior to Detroit. He’s also strangely dismissive about his college experience, a stark contrast to how he’d willingly spend hours regaling colourful tales of Makkachin, his pet dog back home, at length.

“I worked in finance for a while,” Viktor would say, when asked about his job. “But it’s not… it’s not anything exciting, so I’m just working freelance right now.” And then he’d abruptly change the subject. Whenever Yuuri’s busy in school or at work--which, ever since Viktor’s arrival, isn’t nearly as often as he should--Viktor would spend his time alone typing on his laptop, only to slam it shut the first instant Yuuri comes back to the apartment.

Yuuri, given to periodic bouts of paranoia, would often wonder if Viktor is, in fact, a Russian drug lord on the loose, seeking refuge in a nondescript town in America. This would explain a manner of things: his evasiveness whenever probed about his job; the way he’d unpredictably throw out incisive, thoughtful commentary about the morning news over breakfast; his expensive tastes in shirts, watches, and wallets alike; why he’d want to stay here with Yuuri, of all places, when the contents his wardrobe alone could probably afford him a year-long stayat any condominium of his choice in the trendiest part of town.

And then he’d discover that Viktor actually has a premium account on club penguin, and that his five penguins are named Peanut Wigglebutt, Luke skyhopper, Zing Zing, Otto Von Longdong, and Mooshoo Vegetable, and beat the idea to death in his head.

The point is: if Viktor doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to discuss his work with anyone, then Yuuri sure as hell isn’t going to probe. It sounds almost as though Viktor’s navigating through some sort of premature mid-life crisis, a sentiment that Yuuri thinks he understands. If anything, Yuuri has spent the entirety of his medical school career feeling like some sort of fraud waiting to be called out, like someone might march up to him one day to tell him that he doesn’t deserve to graduate or become a doctor. It’s almost a shock to realise that even someone like Viktor isn’t immune to--if not crippling self-doubt, then at least some sort of work related apprehension. The point is, Yuuri quickly learns to steer the conversation away from Viktor’s work, and gives Viktor all the space he needs to deal.

Yuuri would know; Yuuri wears self-doubt like a second skin, has never known any other emotion more intimately his whole life.

Phichit thinks that Viktor is the best thing that has happened to Yuuri since sliced bread. (Barring the one incident in the neighbourhood park where Yuuri had been getting chased around by wild geese, and rather than try to save him Phichit had spent the entire time taking a video of it to be uploaded to Instagram, which later garnered a record-breaking number of comments, like the true friend that he is.)

“At least I know you won’t starve without me,” Phichit tells him, and he sounds so serious about the statement that Yuuri is almost indignant. It’s one thing to eat exclusively out of cans and spend more time in the med library than anywhere else combined; it’s another thing to have your ex-roommate, who is two years younger than you, fuss over you like your mother.

“I wasn’t going to starve,” Yuuri says, defensively. “I can take care of myself!”

Phichit assumes a most long-suffering expression and says, in a terrible imitation of Yuuri, “My name is Yuuri Katsuki! I invented six different ways of prying my eyelids open with a toothpick!”

“And--and I can cook!”

“Have you been letting yourself near the stove, Yuuri,” Phichit says in genuine horror. “You swore a blood oath never to do it again after the Unspeakable Frittata Incident of 2015--“

Yuuri laughs in spite of himself. Viktor is a wickedly good cook, a fact that is as surprising as it is patently unfair. “I haven’t, but Viktor… cooks for both of us.” Which, he realises a moment later after Phichit assumes a smug expression on his face, is probably counterproductive to his argument. Whatever his argument was, anyway.

“Best thing since sliced bread,” Phichit declares, triumphant. “Does this guy have an Instagram? Snapchat? We should totally follow each other.”

“He doesn’t,” Yuuri says, horrified, and changes the subject immediately. He prays that he will not live to see the day Viktor watches the video of him running across a field of daisies with tears streaming down his face and three ferocious geese hot on his heels.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Viktor’s effects on Yuuri carry beyond their time spent together in the apartment. Chris leans over to Yuuri during one of their infamous Monday night group study sessions (during which everyone camps in one of the seminar rooms in the med faculty, blast playlists with psychedelic noises on loop for hours on end because JJ believes that music of a certain frequency would greatly enhance their powers of concentration, and drinks their body weight thrice over in caffeine), takes a deep sniff, cups Yuuri’s face in his hand and declares, “This is the scent… of vigorous young love.”

There are so many things wrong with the gesture that Yuuri’s mind temporarily short circuits, and he’s left to gape at Chris like an amnesiac goldfish. Across the table, Otabek raises his eyebrows in a way that makes his opinion on Chris’ disruptive behaviour abundantly clear.

“I--what the hell are you talking about, Chris,” Yuuri wails, because he is only one-quarter into his two-hundred page reading but has already downed half his stash of extra strong coffee, which means that he’s grossly miscalculated his workload-to-caffeine-ratio, which means that he cannot afford to waste any more brain cells right now.

Chris points an accusing finger at Yuuri’s wholesome packed dinner of beef stroganoff, quinoa salad, and cutely shaped tamago maki. “For four years you subsisted on foul smelling canned chowder, Yuuri, and now you’re bringing these--these homemade packed dinners to school--who is she, Yuuri, and where did you find her?”

“Y’know, it could just be her mom,” Sara quips brightly, from her half-reclined position on her inflatable beanbag.

Chris fishes out a handwritten note tucked underneath the bento box, and reads the contents aloud before Yuuri has the chance to snatch it away from him. “’Dear Yuuri’,” he says, oblivious as to Yuuri’s frantic pawing. “’I hope you will enjoy the dinner I made for you. Love, Viktor.’ Do you think this is his mom?”

“He’s my roommate,” Yuuri tries to justify, but Chris is merciless.

“It isn’t just the dinner, Yuuri,” Chris says. “You’ve been walking around with this--with this joyful glow on you, it’s ridiculous, can you just tell us already, I haven’t had any action in months and I have a physical need to live vicariously through your experiences--“

Because the entire world is conspiring against him, Yuuri’s phone starts to buzz at the exact moment, and the caller ID shows: Viktor.

Chris looks so disgustingly scandalised, Yuuri wishes fervently for his head to swell up and explode. He excuses himself from the room while staunchly ignoring the way everyone is gaping at him (with the exception of Otabek, who has resumed poring over his books after stealthily cranking up the music in an attempt to drown out the conversation.)

“Hey,” Yuuri breathes into the phone. “What’s up?”

“Yuuri,” comes Viktor’s cheerful voice from the other side of the line, and even through the fuzzy static--the reception’s pretty poor in the building--his voice comes across as almost fond. “Nothing much, I was trying to find a scrap paper I’d left in the storage cupboard and I came across your family photo album, I hope you don’t mind me looking”--he says this all in a single breath, and continues before Yuuri can interject--“Yuuri, why didn’t you tell me how big a crybaby you were, you were crying in half the photos, then there’s one with you and the dog, and the one with you wearing a baby dress, oh my god Yuuri you’re adorable.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says haplessly, torn between feeling embarrassed about being called adorable, and also utter mortification. “Did you just call me to tell me that you saw a couple of photos?”

“Those aren’t just photos, they’re your baby photos,” Viktor says, and for some bizarre reason he sounds almost proud. “And yes, that’s all! Have a good study session!” And he hangs up, just like that.

Yuuri puts the phone down slowly.

He thinks: Viktor calls him just to tell him that his baby photos are cute. He thinks: Viktor cracks his knuckles when he’s bored and yawns nonstop when he’s sleepy. His bedhead is the cutest and most ridiculous thing ever. He thinks: Viktor listened to his drunken tirade on the plane, probably had Yuuri’s puke inadvertently splashed onto him, and still doesn’t think of Yuuri any less for it.

Viktor.

Yuuri doesn’t think about anything else for the rest of the night.

It’s almost three AM when Yuuri reaches home; Viktor is curled up like a cat in the living room, long limbs sprawled across their tiny sofa.

“… was waiting for you,” Viktor says blearily, and makes a tiny whining noise as the light from the corridor spills into the living room. Yuuri closes the door hastily. “You’re late.”

“I know,” Yuuri tells him. He drapes a spare blanket over Viktor and--for a long, quiet moment--watches the gentle rise and fall of Viktor’s silhouette amidst the darkness.

He’s in love with Viktor Nikiforov.

The newfound knowledge settles upon Yuuri like some sort of persistent fog, makes him feel giddy the whole day. It’s not like he’s never had a crush in his life, and it’s not like he’s never dated or made out with other boys before. But Viktor’s the only person who has seen both drunk Yuuri at his very worst, and meek Yuuri at his most mundane and banal. He makes Yuuri feel like--if not the most interesting person in the world, then at least someone worthy of interest.

Here’s the thing: Yuuri’s existence is not an exercise in superlatives, is not interesting in the least. He’s got average looks, average hobbies, an average existence; he takes the concept of average to an art form. Sure, he’s got a handful of accomplishments, but these don’t come easily or naturally to him.

Viktor, however, is different. If mankind ever developed a scale for perfection, it would probably begin with Yuuri and end with Viktor, two polar ends of a spectrum. Girls on the streets stop in their steps to gawk openly at Viktor, without him ever having to try; the right kind of smile, it’d be boys instead. Viktor is decked from head to foot in tasteful, branded clothes; he carries with him an aristocratic grace that that is impossible to stifle, even when he’s doing something as ridiculous as rummaging for leftover pizza in the fridge at 2AM in the morning. He turns on his impossible charm at the drop of a hat; he can be ruthlessly perceptive when he wants to be.

And yet, despite it all: Viktor asks after Yuuri day after day, laps the information up like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. He clings onto every word Yuuri says over dinner, and asks Yuuri things like “how’d your practicum go” and “how was dinner with your classmates”, like he cares enough to remember whenever Yuuri has a test, or a dinner event; like he cares at all.

For this reason, Yuuri allows himself the self-indulgent thought that, perhaps, just maybe, there is a slight chance that Viktor might be interested in being something more than just… platonic (if extremely close, and extremely domesticated) roommates.

He has no idea how to go about confirming this.

The problem isn’t that Viktor is noncommittal. Viktor is, if anything, remarkably vocal about what he does and does not like. His favourite colour is teal, and he hates waking up at any time that is not between 7AM and 8.30AM in the morning. He likes playing crosswords, but he wears plastic gloves when he does them because he hates getting his hand stained by newspaper ink. He has, on more than three occasions, declared his undying love for sweet potato shouchu. He is deeply affronted by the concept of wearing shoes in the apartment.

Herein lies the issue: Viktor likes Yuuri, a fact that Viktor has made abundantly clear. But it’s one thing to know that Viktor likes him, and another thing entirely to be assured that he places above an alcoholic beverage amongst The Extensive List Of Things Viktor Nikiforov Likes. (Yuuri has no idea how to go around affirming this; perhaps he could sneak a multiple choice question in between Viktor’s daily crosswords? Q. Pick your favourite item out of the following list: A. Crossword puzzles B. Katsuki Yuuri C. Teal D. Sweet potato shouchu.)

Thankfully for Yuuri, concealing all and any form of inner turmoil is the best, if only, talent that he has cultivated in his five years spent in America. And if he feels like someone just made him swallow fifty angry porcupines that are hell bent on shredding him up to a million pieces on the inside, he continues his day as though nothing has happened, nope, no life-changing realisations whatsoever. If Viktor spends the entire evening draping his arm around Yuuri’s shoulder, teasing Yuuri while he tries to study for his test, Yuuri will smile and pretend like nothing is wrong, even if he wants nothing more than to run to the fish tank and immerse his entire head into it. If Viktor packs Yuuri a lunchbox and asks, playfully, for a kiss, Yuuri will give his usual embarrassed laugh, and not spontaneously combust into ten billion pieces of carbon atoms.

It’s a ridiculous limbo that Yuuri’s trapped himself it, but it all becomes moot two weeks later, when a journalist knocks on Yuuri’s door, and Yuuri will stand, stock still, as everything descends into hell.

So: it’s 10AM on a Saturday morning when a bespectacled young man comes knocking on Yuuri’s door, asking for a certain Viktor Nikiforov.

“He’s out running errands today,” Yuuri says, feeling a little thrown off because he’s never known Viktor to have any visitors in his six months in Detroit. “You are…?”

“I’m Richard, from The Daily Detroit,” the man says. “Are you Mr. Nikiforov’s roommate?”

“I am--but why are you--“ On hearing Yuuri’s reply, Richard’s expression suddenly shifts from politely neutral to interested, as in the I-look-like-I-want-to-eat-your-liver-like-a-creepy-predator variant of interested. Oh god, Viktor’s really a Russian drug lord, isn’t he? This is where it all goes to hell. Yuuri’s mother had him swear a blood oath never to do drugs in America, which he’s abided to staunchly but it’s all moot now because he’s gone and screwed everything up spectacularly for himself, what with having a drug lord as a roommate and then developing a huge crush on him to boot--

“May I have your name?” Richard asks, brandishing out a large notepad.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Yuuri says, and immediately regrets not coming up with a fake name when he sees Richard scribbling it down on his notepad.

“Is it true that Mr. Nikiforov has abandoned his career in academia for good? Does he really intend to condemn himself to writing novels for the rest of his life? Is he not going to give MIT a second chance? Is academia going to lose one of its greatest economists of our time?”

Yuuri clutches at his head. His poor, throbbing head.

“Viktor. Is. A famous economist?”

“Mr. Katsuki,” Richard says, and he’s the one looking baffled now, “are you aware that your roommate is the youngest professor ever nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics?”

Viktor Nikiforov From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Viktor Nikiforov (25 December 1989 - ) is a Russian economist, mathematician, and writer. Best known for his discovery of the Nikiforov paradox and its role in applied mathematics, Nikiforov has won numerous awards in the field of economics, and is regarded as one of the most influential living economists in his time. Nikiforov has written seven books in his career, the most popular being “The Impossible Doctrine”, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. He is also the co-author of “Microeconomics: eleventh edition”, amongst many others.

As of 2017, Nikiforov has quit his job as professor of economics in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is unclear as to whether Nikiforov has plans to return to academia.

Contents [hide]

1 Early life and education 2 Academic career 3 Author 4 Economic views 5 Personal views 6 Awards and accomplishments 7 Retirement from academia 8 Public speculation on retirement 9 Published works 10 See also 11 Further reading 12 References 13 External links

MEET 10 OF THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CONTEMPORARY ECONOMISTS | BUSINESS TODAY

Viktor Nikiforov Age: 29 Net worth: $230 million Country: Russia

While still a graduate student in Harvard University, Nikiforov discovered the Nikiforov paradox, which has since revolutionised our understanding of game theory. His nonfiction book “The Impossible Doctrine”, which was originally published in Russian, has been translated to twenty-eight different languages and won him numerous prizes including the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In his brief tenure at MIT, Viktor won twenty-two international awards and co-authored five books, two of which ranked number #1 in Amazon’s list of bestselling nonfiction books for a total of seventeen consecutive weeks.

In 2017, Nikiforov announced his resignation from academia, and plans to make an abrupt career switch to writing romance novels.

Exclusive interview: Viktor Nikiforov explains his shocking career choices Business Insider

Li Chang Ho. Feb 2, 2017, 12:42PM

After a whirlwind month of touring for his latest book, “New Age Poverty”, Viktor Nikiforov has called it quits.

“I don’t regret the time and effort I’ve spent over the past ten-odd years in academia, but I am looking to developing my career as a romance novelist from now on,” he said.

As a previous professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Viktor has made innumerable contributions to the field of Economics. When asked about the reason for his departure, Viktor said, “As an academic researcher, my primary objective is that of continuous discovery. I fear that I am unable to do so anymore.”

Why romance novelist? To this, Viktor’s reply was, “So much of my work deals with a macroscopic understanding of the human condition. I wish to spend some time to understand the human psyche at its most trivial and mundane.”

Viktor graduated from Moscow State University at the age of 16. He later spent two years completing his graduate degree in Harvard University, during which he produced the bulk of his work that would later be regarded as one of the most revolutionary economic theorems of our time. Since then, he has been consistently voted amongst the top 10 most influential contemporary economists by The Economist from 2010 to 2017.

When asked about his concrete plans for 2017, Viktor said, “I wish to spend some time to travel and gain inspiration for my new novel, and take things slowly from there. I look forward to trying out new and different experiences in the year ahead.”

He clarifies that he has no long term plans to return to his job in MIT, although he describes his previous working environment as conducive, rigorous, and collegiate. “I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to both the organisation, and my colleagues, for their invaluable help over the past seven years,” Viktor said, when asked to comment on his tenure in MIT.

Whatever the reason for his departure, there is little doubt that academia will mourn the loss of one of its brightest and most promising young economists of the twenty-first century.

More: Viktor Nikiforov The Viktor Paradox

I wish to spend some time to understand the human psyche at its most trivial and mundane.

I look forward to trying out new and different experiences in the year ahead.

Yuuri snaps his laptop shut. He thinks that he might throw up.

For the rest of the day in hospital, he turns these two sentences, over and over, in his head, till he feels sick to his stomach. He knows that he should probably think about it rationally, maybe even entertain the notion of talking to Viktor about it, but his heart is dancing in funny little beats in his chest and his hands feel stone cold.

Suddenly everything makes sense: Viktor’s bizarre interest in Yuuri’s life, his refusal to broach the topic of his work, the way he’d look at Yuuri and then suddenly turn to scribble down illegible Russian words on scrap pieces of paper; Yuuri really should have known. Viktor’s interested in Yuuri’s life, because Yuuri is nothing if not the king of mundaneness. Viktor chose Yuuri as a roommate not in spite of how deeply uninteresting Viktor finds Yuuri, but because of it. It’s a sick twist of irony: that his boringness should be so entertaining to Viktor, who’d grown tired of how illustrious his life had been. Dull is the new exciting, and all that.

Where he had been peering at Viktor through his cloud of infatuation, Viktor had regarded him with nothing more than the cool, clinical gaze of a researcher. To Yuuri, Viktor was a crush. To Viktor, Yuuri might as well have been a tadpole in Viktor’s third grade science project.

Distantly, he hopes that he’d provided Victor with whatever new and different experience Viktor required to write his stupid romance novel. He congratulates himself on unknowingly providing someone with six months of ceaseless entertainment.

He grits his teeth and tells himself that it’s fine, it’s really, really fine. The human psyche at its most mundane; it’s not like Yuuri has ever pretended to be anything else.

Viktor comes home that night bearing two takeaway bowls of katsudon, and a ridiculously triumphant expression on his face.

“I did it, Yuuri,” Viktor singsongs. “I found the one shop in the whole of Detroit that sells decent katsudon, you have no idea how hard it--“ Then he sees the expression on Yuuri’s face, and stops midway through his sentence.

“Yuuri? Yuuri, are you okay? Are you ill?” Viktor asks frantically, his face twisting into something that looks almost frantic. Yuuri allows himself a fleeting moment of delusion that it’s frantic concern, but dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes.

“Viktor--”

Yuuri spent the entire afternoon rehearsing his speech in front of Viktor; he’d ran a thousand different versions of it through his head, tried to come up with something that could adequately convey the degree of confusion and hurt he was going through. In the last moment, gripped by a wave of sheer mortification, he'd contemplated hiding the articles away and never mentioning them ever again.

And yet--he isn't the Yuuri on the plane anymore. The Yuuri now--there's a small part of him that's staunchly rooted in the belief that, surely, all the times they spent together should have counted for something. Even if Viktor had been playing along, surely he would've felt something. Yuuri doesn't know if he's being pathetic, or brave, or just straight out delusional. He looks at Viktor, who's standing in front of him with his eyes wide and palms spread open, and thinks, you taught me this. You taught me to do this.

“A reporter from a newspaper came by today,” Yuuri says, and every syllable feels like he's pulling teeth.

He shoves the article from Business Insider interview towards Viktor, and there’s a momentary flash of recognition in Viktor’s eyes that gives way to blind panic.

“Yuuri--Yuuri, I’m so sorry, I didn’t--I should’ve told you--I wanted to--“

“But you didn’t,” Yuuri tells him, because it was what mattered the most.

For once, Viktor is speechless, and Yuuri's heart sinks; he'd hoped that Viktor would somehow, miraculously, explain the entire situation away. His instincts are screaming at him to run away from this mortifying situation, run as far away as possible so that he'd never see the light of the world again, but Yuuri finds it in him to stay rooted on the ground. He tilts his chin up, looks into Viktor's eyes. It is both a plea and a challenge.

“Yuuri, I want to explain myself,” Viktor says; his lips are trembling, and he is very pale. “It--it isn’t like what it seems.”

“You can’t hide something like this from me and tell me that it’s not what it seems,” Yuuri retorts, incredulous.

“No, you’re right, I can’t!” Viktor shouts, then abruptly lowers his voice. Viktor runs his fingers through his hair, tugs at it, something that he only does when he’s exceptionally stressed. It should make Yuuri feel relieved that Viktor actually cares enough to feel stressed out about the whole situation, or smug that he’s not the only one feeling the hurt, but it doesn’t, not even in the slightest. It only makes him want to cry. “But can you at least hear me out.”

“Fine,” Yuuri says. “Fine, I’m listening.”

“It’s true that I was looking for, for inspiration,” Viktor says, wincing visibly at the last word. “And it’s true that I wanted to experience something different. I don’t deny any of it. I thought that being with you would inspire me to write, that much was true, but you were never just something to be used, Yuuri. You were more than that.

“I meant everything I said in the interview. I’d reached the peak of my career long ago, and I knew that I could never come up with anything better than what I’d came up with in Harvard. Of course I could continue churning out economic models, but a lot of my work felt… aimless, like I was just helping the rich get richer, which was, it was so pointless, to me. At one point I just thought--on a whim, I have no idea what possessed me--fuck it, I was going to throw all of that aside and go for something as far removed from what I was doing as possible, so that I would never have to go back to doing that again. That was when I decided to switch career tracks, write some romance novels, because why not, right. They were complete trash, by the way. It drove my publisher--Yakov--nuts, although I couldn’t really have cared less.

“The day I met you on the plane, I was headed for a conference in Detroit, the last one I’d attend before retiring from academia altogether. When the guy collapsed next to me, and when you first walked down that aisle towards us, I, I didn’t think that much about it, to be honest. I just assumed that you were a doctor or something. And then you started freaking out a little when the guy’s seizure didn’t stop, and I realised that you were only a student, and that you looked pretty much like you were going to pass out yourself. But you saved him in the end, and then you came and sat down next to me and--

“You amazed me, Yuuri. I knew you were scared, but I hadn’t realised exactly how scared until you started drinking and everything started spilling out; you were scared and yet you did it anyway. And the rawness of your emotions that day was--there was nothing mundane about that. It was the truest anyone had been in front of me for a very, very long time.”

Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t even know where to look, because Viktor is crying.

“You fascinated me, Yuuri. After our encounter on the plane, I checked into my hotel and, for the first time, wrote a draft that Yakov didn’t dismiss as complete bullshit. The week later I decided to contact your landlady. I should’ve told you about everything else in the beginning, but I didn’t, which was inexcusable. But I--I never intended to hurt you, or use you only as a tool. I wanted to preserve the same relationship we had; I assumed--and it was wrong of me to assume, I know--but I thought that I would’ve been more accessible to you as Viktor, the man on the plane, and not Viktor, the academic.”

“But that was just that one time,” Yuuri says, in spite of himself; now he feels like a fraud, which is patently ridiculous, because he’s the one who’s been kept in the dark for six whole months. “After you moved in I was just, just going about my life in the apartment, I didn’t do anything heroic, or grand, or exciting, or--“

“Yuuri,” Viktor cuts in, and he sounds truly exasperated now, “Yuuri, you didn’t have to. You being you--it was enough. Being together with you, spending time together--it wasn’t just a phase I was going through for the sake of an experience."

Viktor's taking in deep, rattling breaths now; his face is flushed bright red. Yuuri has never seen him like this before.

"Did you think it was mundane, to me? Because it wasn’t. But if you think that--that eating katsudon together is mundane, and watching movies and saying good morning and goodnight to each other is mundane then fine, fine. I’ll pick mundane over everything else. Any. Single. Day.”

Viktor stops talking, exhales sharply and stares straight into Yuuri’s eyes, as if daring Yuuri to contradict him.

Then--so quickly that Yuuri has no idea who moved first--they’re kissing; Yuuri digs his fingers into the small of Viktor’s back, feels the pressure of Viktor’s chest, the steady thump thump thump of Viktor’s heart against his own and thinks: yes, this is what he had wanted, ever since that stupid drunken conversation on that stupid plane ride; yes, this is everything that he was looking for.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Viktor murmurs when they finally break apart and Viktor’s resting his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, his mouth pressed softly against the angle of Yuuri’s jaw.

"Kissing's great and all," Yuuri says, after a while, "but you know it isn't going to solve everything, right?"

At this, Viktor tenses, but Yuuri reaches out and slowly, gently, wipes the wetness off Viktor's cheeks.

"But we can sort it out together," Yuuri tells him. "We've got time."

This close, Yuuri catches the scent of sweat and vanilla softener and Viktor’s aftershave, remembers them from all the times Viktor had draped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders and gallantly sacrificed his good sweater as Yuuri wept to the closing theme of Spirited Away. When Viktor runs his calloused fingers across Yuuri’s wrist, Yuuri thinks about the month before, when Yuuri had fallen sick and Viktor had sat by Yuuri’s bedside the whole night, fussing over Yuuri and rubbing his thumb over Yuuri’s knuckles in little repetitive motions. When Viktor’s rattled breathing finally quietens down to something slower, shallower, Yuuri closes his eyes, and allows himself the luxury of holding Viktor in his arms, like this, for a little while longer.

“Yuuri. Stay with me, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says, and it feels a lot like coming home.

Etc., etc.:

Phichit: someone called viktor just followed me on IG im assuming it’s ur bf Phichit: oh my goD WHY DOES HE HAVE 103K FOLLOWERS (Missed whatsapp call from Phichit) Phichit: W Phichit: T Phichit: f Phichit: W T F YUURI KATSUKI WHY DIDN’T TELL ME YOU WERE DATING VIKTOR NIKIFOROV Phichit: MA IM FAMOUS Phichit: you owe me SOMANY EXPLANATIONS YUURI. SO MANY (Missed whatsapp call from Phichit) Phichit: he Phichit: he’s liking all my photos and videos of you LOL Phichit: he JUST LIKED THE ONE WITH THE GEESE

#my fics #yuuri on ice #victuuri #yuuri katsuki #victor nikiforov

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tiredbiplantlady · 7 years

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bipolar ask posted by loloren69

General:

1. Type 1 or type 2?

I don’t really know. I could speculate as a psych master’s student, but I don’t feel comfortable making that call. I only know my therapist told me I was bipolar, said I was manic, and described mania to me and specified my behaviors that fell in line with that, no doubt about it, which would indicate bipolar I

2. Self-dx or professional dx?

Self-suspected, professional confirmed

3. Are you currently hypo/manic, depressed, mixed, stable, or not sure?

Hypomanic at the least, but it feels like I’m coming down because I’m exhausted for the first time in a while and 6 or 7 days of barely sleeping

4. Do you have any other mental illnesses/disorders?

I’ve had a diagnosable form of nearly every anxiety disorder in the DSM at different times since childhood and was diagnosed with various disorders from ADD to dysthymia and adjustment disorder. I consider my only other still-valid diagnosis to be PTSD, but it’s in remission.

5. When did you first start having symptoms?

In retrospect I’d say the mood problems started around 15, but it got way worse in 2014 and worse still in 2015. the depressive symptoms were out of control and may have been a mixed episode (age 22)

6. When did you realize/learn that you have bipolar?

I suspected it briefly as a teenager even though I didn’t know shit about it, but didn’t think about it again until the past year and then the past few months my therapist identified symptoms I described as hypomania and in the last week as mania

7. Have you ever received a misdiagnosis?

I don’t know if my former diagnoses were necessarily “misdiagnoses” - I think symptoms change over time, new things come up, other things trail off. I think one professional can see symptoms and call it one thing and another professional can call it something else. It’s complicated and subjective.

8. How self-aware are you on a scale of 1-10?

LMAO I am the most over-analyzing, self-aware person - easy 9 or 10

9. How many people know about your bipolar disorder?

Couple people. I’m skeptical about talking about disorders, especially new diagnoses because I’m insecure about what people think because I’ve received several from different professionals, and outside people tend to just see a shifting diagnosis and think I’m making shit up “new year, new diagnosis” always gotta have “something wrong with me” to talk about. Which isn’t how I feel and labels don’t really mean shit, it’s the symptoms and their treatment I care about. A label is just a fast way to describe something complex. sorry it took a while to figure out what was wrong and i went thru many labels before landing here

10. Are any of your family members bipolar?

Two formal diagnoses/very related diagnoses that I know of (grandma - MDD w/psychotic features, highly likely undiagnosed bipolar based on past behaviors (delusions, hallucinations, yelling on top of a roof, etc. police called, institutionalization), uncle - bipolar I w/psychotic features). some others I suspect, imo

11. Name three fictional characters you relate to and/or headcanon as bipolar.

Uhhh Ian Gallagher. I’m not creative with this right now and I haven’t thought about this at all.

Hypo/mania:

12. When hypo/manic, do you get euphoric, dysphoric, angry, creative, social, or several of the above?

It depends. It seems like I get euphoric, creative and social sometimes, and euphoric, agitated (not angry), and dysphoric other times. But those cluster together

13. What has been your longest hypo/manic episode?

I think it was from November 2016 to January 2017, so like 3 months, but it was the first “episode” I noted and kept even some track of after the fact. I may have had others in the past.

14. Have you ever had a psychotic episode? What symptoms did it include?

I’ve had two depressive episodes that I can specifically certainly note that included delusions (lasted just over a month to two months) of the somatic variety.

15. What kind of impulsive decisions have you made?

Where do I start? Over-spending, over-eating, drinking to excess, impulsive risky sex/sexual situations/hypersexuality, getting tattoos/piercings (kinda goes with spending, but I mention it specifically because it’s permanent), long-distance travel without telling anyone where I was going, cheating, lying, not thinking ahead and it hurting people, falling in love, ending relationships, general recklessness and selfishness. I’m sure there’s more and I’m not proud of it in the slightest, so please don’t think I am.

16. What’s the most money you’ve spent in a single day while hypo/manic?

$200-300

17. What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep?

Period...um. I couldn’t say. Probably 2 with NO sleep and with minimal sleep (3-4 hours) over a week

18. Are you a creative type? Have you ever made a poem/song/other artwork about being bipolar?

I’m creative, but I don’t write about being bipolar because I never fully considered myself to be so until recently. I’ve written about mood instability and trauma a TON tho. And much of my art work is and always has been about duality, mixed emotions, extremes, and highs/lows.

Depression:

19. When depressed, do you get suicidal, bored, anxious, guilty, or several of the above?

It depends, but I’m mostly unmotivated as fuck and empty. I start feeling worthless and unlovable and I hate myself. Sometimes I feel suicidal, but have never attempted and won’t. I’ve self-harmed and planned how to kill myself, but was never intending to do it. I’ve spent the majority of my life in a state of constant anxiety so there’s that, especially when depressed. Irrational guilt and sluggishness are common for me with depression. Once in a while my mood dives along with my energy, but my mind is over-worked and highly anxious, which is when the delusions I’ve had occurred.

20. What has been your longest depressive episode?

Fuck...months upon months. I couldn’t tell you. Maybe even a year or more, which is why I was misdiagnosed as dysthymic as a teenager

21. How do you cope with depression?

In the past, I didn’t. I suffered massively. Now, I’m still not so great with it. I talk in therapy and I write, but even still I tend to stay in bed and feel numb/mope/distract myself with anything I can. I tend to be able to function enough to go to school because I feel like my life and future depends on it, am anxious as fuck, and do my best but end up with late work, being withdrawn and feeling doomed to fail, believe I’m doing far worse than I am and that I’m awful and don’t deserve to be there

22. Are you a sleep-all-day depressive or an insomniac depressive? Do you overeat or lose your appetite?

It depends, but in the most recent past, sleep-all-day and overeat. But I’ve been sleep-all-day and no appreciative and I’ve also been insomniac and overeat (2013-14)

23. When is the last time you cried or had a breakdown?

Tuesday August 1, 2017 (9 days ago)

24. Have you ever self-harmed?

YUP. Razor blades/cutting, punishing binge-eating, starvation, and abusive risky BDSM/relationships/sex

25. Have you had problems with substance abuse?

Not really, but I’ve drank a little lately

26. Have you ever attended AA/NA/etc?

27. Have you ever attempted suicide?

28. Have you ever written a suicide note?

Yes, but it was just to get it out. I threw it out after I wrote it.

Other symptoms and treatment:

29. Do you ever dissociate?

Y U P

30. Do you ever have hallucinations? If so, what are they?

No hallucinations. I’ve thought I’ve heard shit before, but I’m pretty sure it was a fluke and I want to believe in ghosts so. Call me crazy if you want, but what the fuck ever. I’ve had delusions only

31. Do you see a therapist? Do you feel like it’s helping?

Yes and yes

32. Are you on any medications? Do you feel like they’re helping?

No, not anymore, and I fucking hate anti-depressants, refuse mood-stabilizers and anti-psychotics and maybe want to keep having some anxiety meds

33. Have you ever been hospitalized?

No, and I want to keep it that way

34. Have you ever attended group therapy?

No, but I’ve conducted roleplay group therapy baahaha

35. Have any of your symptoms gotten worse over the years?

Yeah, I think the manic shit has gotten worse over the last 2 years

36. Have any of your symptoms gotten better over the years?

I think the depressive stuff has gotten a little better, or maybe just less frequent

37. Do you have a favorite coping method?

What does that mean...healthy or unhealthy...I guess I like meditation and I fucking miss working out A LOT. I like drinking as an unhealthy thing, but I’m sure I’ll hate it as much as I hate binge-eating once it catches up to me if I let it get that far. I’m tired of gaining weight after the 80 pounds I lost, and it’s really fucking with my self-esteem, makes me feel frustrated and sick

38. If you could choose to be neurotypical, would you?

#meandmine #mental illness///#general tw #self harm tw #alcohol tw #drugs tw #suicide tw

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dutch-rub · 7 years

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My One Month Stay at a Mental Health Facility

I was away for a month at a voluntary 'partial-hospitalization' mental health facility. Here's the story.

I've been back two days now and it's been rather hectic. I never saw Jody for that month. Electronics ban too.

Jody worked very hard to get the kitchen finally open. It only came together the day I came home. Our friend Marc also worked countless hours in getting the new wood counters finished. We are incredibly grateful. Hans for helping out with key details so I could go get help. And for my good friend JJ L for regularly checking in with Jody so often. And good ‘ol Mom for the many prayers.

While Jody told some people I "look great" I need to clarify some important facts.

I still have severe depression and am on max meds by law.

I still have progressive neurological ills that cause my body chronic stiffness & pain, no use of my right foot & left foot is getting worse, and moody vocal cords. And to add a cherry on top Seasonal Adjustment Disorder (like some of you).

Yes, I feel very rested even though it was no retreat. Classes were six days a week 9-5. And we were responsible for our own breakfast and lunch. And not a single outing provided by The Center.

The core psychological method used was Dialectical Behavioral Theory (DBT) which focuses on four key isssues: Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Distress Tolerance, and Emotion Regulation. 1/3rd of the time was spent on that and 2/3rds on other classes like Down to Up (depression), Anxiety, Relationships, Boundaries, Men's Issues, Faith (optional), Nutrition and one-on-one meetings with a psychiatrist, nutritionist, naturopath, and three counselors. And even acupuncture once a week.

I attribute my feeling rested to a few things:

I was totally off the grid. No computer, phone or TV. Just my iPod. Some people needed their phones for one reason or another. But they used them for other purposes too. The problem is, come Monday, many of those people were triggered bad. When it came to my turn to talk I didn't want to boast, but I said I never saw my family or had my phone and I was in a very nice bubble. It was glorious. A true day of rest as my roommates were never home on Sunday.

At night the guys in my building were like guys at a Frat (but no alcohol or drugs). We'd do our homework every night then sit around our condo and told lies and laughed a lot. It was awesome. I had two roommates for two weeks each. Both were fantastic. One 42 then 65.

My feet and voice held up pretty good so I could not be focused on that. I drove to the Center and avoided walking. I never took the elevator once in four weeks.

The mattress was good (not a small matter for me).

Downtown Edmonds is a nice! It's like a small town with many nice restaurants and sports restaurants. They have bar-restaurants that look a lot like bars. Beer signs all over with TV's for sports...and kids.

There were some negatives:

The current Center admin sometimes has a difficult time differentiating between a millennial addict and a mature adult that has no addiction issues. This, in turn, leads to The Center to ‘always be right’ attitude. I hope the Founder and President, Dr. Jantz addresses this soon.

My illness requires a bidet. And no bidet for a month made it rather 'interesting' to figure things out as the condo was four blocks away.

We've all seen rehab movies and I presumed there would be some group activities built in. Nope. They didn't even give ideas like Pike Place Market. It was the locals who were giving the out of State visitors the ideas.

To tell you how successful this program is, about 75% of the client's voluntarily extended a week or two (mostly two). Why? People start five days week so they get on the fast-moving train and the first 5-7 days is a blur. And many people come in while in a brutal condition. I'd say only 1/3 of clients have addiction issues. The most common condition is most often spiraling anxiety with depression. A recent suicide attempt was not that uncommon. And those were only the ones clients chose to share.

For many, the suicide topic is close and personal. Sometimes details are shared that are far too intimate. It's very humbling.

While I do not have abnormal anxiety issues, my heart goes out to people who suffer from it. It sounds god-awful...like you're being choked. Imagine freaking out over a toothpaste selection? And since it can come on at any minute, it's always on their mind. An anxiety attack is not hyperbole.

With no anxiety, that’s why I can appear so normal. It’s brutal when a friend comes up to me, knows your quite sick, and says “But you look good!” The things we say to the mentally ill...

The good news is people with anxiety really can learn skills to cope with it. It's mind-numbing to see how much people can improve in dealing with anxiety in just a few weeks; from a total catatonic state to cracking a subtle joke while they even look at you.

Where depression is treated more with psychologically and counseling. But these are used for both depression and anxiety. How?

Are you following your core values? (not society's or your church's). If not that can cause much internal dissonance.

Are you delaying a passion because you feel you have to?

How is your mind processing thoughts?

Did you not grieve a big loss? That was one of my big epiphanies. I never grieved not being able to work, missing my clients of decades, and not being able to ride a bike ever again. Not one person ever said “Whoa. You had to sell your bike? That must have been a bad day.” Not even from people I used to bike with! It sounds like a Dr. Phil episode but it’s real. Remember, Grief and Bereavement are not always the same.

Do you need to forgive yourself? (I was surprised how many many people suffered from that).

Do you realize God will forgive you just for asking?

Are you letting people tromp on your boundaries? Have you even set any? Do you know how to say no? Or do you lie to avoid it?

Nutrition. For me, I need to avoid anti-inflammatory foods that might be making my nerves even worse.

Sleep. Talk about getting to basics. No wonder so many of the clients felt like crap.

Family support or guilt? Is it family or is it you thinking its family?

Figuring out when friends and family were out-of-line and to quit blaming yourself. The problem is friends and even family think just because that person was in treatment, that makes the curing 100% on the client. Simply...not...true. Many of the ‘friends’ sit there with there arms crossed waiting to see if they are ‘fixed.’ That is every client’s fear. And being home for only a few days now, I can say that is not paranoia. It’s true. Many family and friends think and act like we were at a retreat. This seems especially true with Moms who have kids at home with Dad. And Dad’s with grown kids. Females clearly seem to have a deeper support bench than men. But what’s new?

Boundary violations. I have very thick skin. I can’t even imagine going through what I have, being thin-skinned. i.e. I really do want to hear about people’s bike rides. However, I do not want to hear about their ‘devastating injury’ that will prevent them from riding for all of six weeks. And then force pics of their knee surgery into my face. (Why do people carry those around anyway?) It’s my own fault that I never told people “it’s better to share those injury stories with others. Since I can’t ride anymore, I just can’t muster the empathy you would appreciate.” While this sounds bitter it comes from hurt on my end, it is my own fault for not setting this boundary. I was salting my own hurt by my silence in order to make them always feel comfortable. That’s not a healthy way to heal.

How is your 'friends circle'? Who is really just an acquaintance on the outer part of the circle that you thought was a friend? We want to work on developing, and becoming, a ‘good and dependable friend.’ If you see the 3rd paragraph, you’ll know who is in my inner circle...the ones who came through. This topic was a biggie for me. As for all of us, I have people I think of as good friends. i reach out them via invite or email at least once a week. But when I went off the grid for a month, the only text (from five ‘friends’) was to borrow me and my truck. Eye-opening for sure.

Here are some variations of the Relationship Circles.

And the opposite happened. People I thought were almost acquaintances, lept into the loyal friend's circle. But that was in my mind as they were there all along. I just didn’t know it.

So yes, some of it is like Dr. Phil. And while I hate the cliche malarkey, it is what it is.

Probably the most rewarding part was knowing I was supposed to be there when people first arrived and were a basket case. Some of those people said some things (or wrote a letter) when I 'coined-out' that really explained what they were going through when I approached them, introduced myself and made a sarcastic joke. (Believe it or not, my sarcastic wit was infamous. But I was never cynical).

It wasn't until the end that I realized these things that came easy for me, were gigantic things for others. It’s just the way my wife Jody rolls, and I’ve learned a lot from her.

I often thought of my first Pastor in these four weeks. Pastor Scott (RIP) would have done the same. On a Sunday night, five of us went to this Alpha class (Christianity 101) at a nearby church (yes, a free dinner was provided). One young lady said her dad took her to a drab Synagogue on Saturday and her Mom took her to a cold, stale church on Sunday. After the video, she knew her loving parents were both right, and yet both wrong. I drew on both sides of a napkin of how I see it. Completely on her own, she was being called by God. It was real.

After the dinner and class, I felt Pastor Scott kicking me in the butt (jerk). So I said to her, 'First, being a Messianic-Jew is an incredible honor. Very few get to claim that. You can tell your parents they were both right. The (Jewish) Torah is 100% true. Read it and you'll see Jesus never contradicted a single word of it. As a matter of fact, Jesus fulfilled 353 Old Testament/Torah prophecies!”

“When you ask Jesus into your life, the Bible says you should get baptized very soon thereafter. (My friend was with us and was having huge doubts God would forgive him for his marital affair.) ____ can you find the scripture where the apostle baptized that foreigner on the road?” He said 'You mean Philip and the wealthy Ethiopian?' He found it in 20 seconds.

“A church or baptismal is not required. The health club has a pool and if you want, we can go right now.”

She didn't...but at least I asked.

Another guy I became friends with was also in a stale church and never been baptized. He was ready, if he hadn't already, to commit himself to a real and fresh faith in Christ. The conversation went like this:

Me: "We can go down to the health club and baptize you right now."

Him: "Oh, so you're a minister?"

Me: "Me? Heck no! But anyone can baptize a new believer."

He also did not take me up on my offer. My point is I was supposed to be there those four weeks. Not only for my own deep needs but other’s needs too.

Sidenote: I could imagine even so-called 'healthy' people going to The Center - A Place of Hope as part of a sabbatical. I’d go back to repeat my first week’s class as I was in a fog.

Another epiphany I had was when they called a class for “Emotional Abuse” and every male went to the class...except me. Gulp. I heard about some of these stories of their childhood in other classes. It was grotesque. It was like the scene from Good Will Hunting.

Sean: My father was an alcoholic. Mean fuckin' drunk. Used to come home hammered, looking to whale on someone. So I would provoke him, so he wouldn't go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings...

Will: He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, "Choose."

Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt there, Vanna.

Will: I used to go with the wrench.

Sean: Why?

Will: Cus fuck him, that' why.

Yeah, it was really like that for most of them. Ironically, many feared the verbal over the physical abuse.

But it wasn’t like that for me. I thanked God for not having to endure that. And I was thankful to my Mom for always having my back...not beating it.

While away, I put a lot of time into a Playlist of 12 songs that represents my thoughts before, during and after the visit. I might have put almost as much time in the order of the songs. If you want the list, email me. But there is one rule. You can’t multi-task while hearing it. It’s important to be mindful ( a key skill taught at the Center) and listen and fully comprehend the lyrics.

Who would have guessed one of the best facilities in the nation would be under 100 miles from my house? Clients came from all over the U.S. for a reason. The Center knows what they are doing. No weird juju. Their system really works.

I’m not ‘cured’ and likely never will be. But I am more aware of how to keep the depression from spiraling: admit & manage some things like grief, nutrition, weak relationships, and boundary violations.

It was a very positive experience at the Center. I’m glad I went. I never thought I'd be the one in a mental health facility. But then again, who does?

Now on to face the winter and yet still Build a Life worth Living.

PS Yes, it’s true I got my first Tat while away. It was something I had been thinking about for a long time. This was not on a whim. What does it mean? Whatever you want it to mean.

A must watch Netflix comedian Neal Brennan

#depression #anxitey #mental illness #semicolon #wellness #suicide

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