#i've been having a really bad headache for at least 6 hours But I Had To FiNiSh It

[avisaurea2]

The Human among The Celestials. Not fitting anywhere, but nonetheless giving meaning to everything.

#inthelittlewood fanart #limited life fanart #mcyt fanart #my head hurts #i've been having a really bad headache for at least 6 hours But I Had To FiNiSh It #and yes martyn has pink sword sO WhAt #i am bad at colouring stuff shutup #/j #i also think that martyn is the human there like in SO MANY WAYS i am obsessed literally #like #imagine #starts sun moon and then the human #the only one who gives meaning to the chaos #the only one who hears watchers and who knows what is happening #moon and sun and stars are clueless because they are just doing what they should do #/gunshots/ #i cam mutter about that for so long and and andojhdfsioupjf;akd #avisaureaart

[agent-cupcake]

Flashbang

Chapter 1 - Puppet Loosely Strung

Spotify Playlist / All Chapters / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 /Chapter 7/ Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 pt.1 / Chapter 9 pt.2 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12

Pairing: One Piece Live Action Buggy x f! Reader

Synopsis: Running away to join the circus doesn’t go exactly as you hoped it would.

Warnings: Mentions of past abuse, murder, generally dark content

Word Count: 13.9k

Disclaimer: I don’t read the manga or watch the anime. This is based solely on OPLA Buggy because Jeff Ward.

Some quick notes before we start: This is what I've been working on this since October. Originally it was going to be one really big one-shot posted at the same time, but it's big enough that I can justify posting it as a series. I'll add warnings as I go, but this is not a happy story and there will be explicit content later on. The reader character might not be somebody you see yourself in, I had a very specific image of what character I had in mind while writing. To me, reader fic is more of a sort of play acting rather than "oh that's literally me" but I know that's not everybody's cup of tea. A lot of this is cope fic and it shows. When times get rough the porn gets rougher, right?

I had help writing this from an individual who is very dear to me. Flashbang wouldn't exist without her, especially since she was the one who gave me the clown brain rot. And then there has been the hours of brainstorming and spitballing and watching Jeff Ward shows/movies as she continued to feed my addiction. Thank you, my love, and also damn you because this wasn't what I needed.

New chapter every Sunday. Enjoy~

.

“Let me put myself in your shoes

As a puppet loosely strung

Around you, they were so confused

That a faulty man could have so much fun”

.

All it took was a little doubt. Through logic or confusion or wishful thinking, you could be convinced that the insignificant person who had parasitically driven you around for the past however many years was a stranger, and now they were gone. Everything that had ever happened fell into incomprehensible dust, and every thought you ever had belonged to somebody else. A cycle of a million memories you didn’t recognize spun through this foggy place, none of them real, none of them familiar. 

Logic, confusion, wishful thinking, or unconsciousness. An endless dream of nothing at all. But as soon as you became aware, it was awareness that those thoughts happened in the past tense, crushed inward by the unrelenting force of existence, and you were shoved back into a body. You—not the real you, the stranger you, the one made of heat and fury and pain, the one you couldn’t recognize—were gasping and thrashing in ignorant confusion, coughing out the sickening taste of blood in your throat. 

Everything, all of it, hurt. And that was all that existed. 

Until it wasn’t. 

Your panicked thrashing made you realize that you were upright, your body straining painfully against the various chains keeping you pinned against the wall in an X. The position put nearly all of your weight on your shoulders and left your head to sag heavily to the side, making the terrible, dizzying headache that much worse. Having suffered more than your fair share of them, you knew that this headache was from more than an uncomfortable position or your old injury. A hot throbbing pain radiated out from the back of your head, shooting little sparks down your spine. It hurt bad enough that nausea formed a tight, heavy ball in your stomach. Gritting your teeth, you forced your eye open, fighting the urge to cringe away from the light as it rolled this way and that. Colors and lights were nothing more than a nauseating smear, but at least you could see. 

Little by little, you became aware of yourself. From far away, you had a vague recollection of leaving, of nerves, excitement, and then of danger. But… no, why weren’t you at home? Doom settled in its rightful place as you realized exactly how little you remembered or knew, slotting into the spot of coherence and reason. Despite the pain, you fought against the shackles holding you in the uncomfortable position, irrationally desperate to be free of them. 

“There she is! Finally,” somebody said from your left. His voice hit like a hammer to the back of your aching head. You strained to look at the speaker, he sounded close, but you couldn’t turn your head far enough to make up for your limited vision. 

Luckily, he didn’t stay out of sight for long. The man’s boots were loud and deliberate as he slowly moved out of your literal blind spot. To your ill-adjusting eye, he was not much more than a blur of white and red and blue, his big smile smudged as you rapidly blinked to focus. A little shock of meaningless recognition in your brain saw the makeup and red nose and said ‘clown’, but the sheer ridiculousness of that made you even more sure that this wasn’t real. 

“Not a fun way to wake up, is it?” he asked. “Keep breathing, let it drain back and cough it out. Trust me, it’s over quicker that way.”

The question you tried to form was, “Who are you?” but all you could manage was a heavy groan followed by a fit of painful coughs, wheezing raggedly in between. Each desperate convulsion rattled the chains and caused the wood to creak, but did nothing to free your bound limbs. The man seemed bored by it, annoyed he had to wait for you to get ahold of yourself. 

Since he hadn’t immediately helped you down, you could only assume that he was the one who shackled you in the first place. Strung you up against a wooden board of some kind in a room you didn’t know. Cramped and windowless, it reeked of paint and sweat and sawdust and sweet salty rot—a unique smell that didn’t help your nausea. Clutter stacked up against the walls. Dense, humid air pressed against you like a heavy coat, paradoxically chilling. Probably because of the fever burning beneath your skin, slicking you up with sweat, soaking into your clothes and the bandana you kept wrapped around your head over the left eye.

Breathe. You focused on your breathing. Panic wouldn’t help you. 

“You done?” he asked. Without any other choices, you turned your head to shamefully wipe your face off on your sleeve before nodding. “Great. Well, now that you’re awake… Welcome!” He threw out his arms with the flamboyant manner of a showman with the greeting, but they wilted right after, his big smile dropping a bit. “Or, at least, that’s what I would say if you hadn’t let yourself in and stolen the opportunity from me.” 

That was bad. Very, very bad. You jerked in an awkward, uncoordinated burst, physically reacting to the danger he presented. 

“No, no, don’t leave on my account,” he said, waving his hands and getting closer as if to stop you. “Oh wait, you can’t! Hah! Yeah, ‘cause of the chains.” He smiled affably, like it was a harmless joke, standing close enough for his gloved fingers to skim along the chain wrapped around your neck. “I guess you’re not going anywhere, huh?” 

You didn’t respond, barely daring to breathe when he was so close. Smiles and melodrama aside, his blue eyes were oddly dead, fixed on you without the slightest bit of humor. And then it finally came back to you, the vital thing that you should have known, that you would have known if you weren’t strung up and suffering such a crippling headache. The makeup, the nose, the hat—

“You’re,” you began to say, but your voice was hoarse and weak, you could barely get it out when he was looking at you so closely, so intently. You cleared your throat, wincing at the metallic taste. “You’re the-that pirate captain Buggy, like on the-the poster?” Right! The clown guy, the red-nosed pirate. You were looking for him. So this was… good, wasn’t it? 

He gave you a flat look, clearly not sharing your weak enthusiasm. “Yes. I am that pirate captain. Buggy, the Genius Jester? The most feared pirate captain in all the East Blue?” He turned with a dramatic flick of his coat, messing with something that had to flash silver before you realized it was a knife. “The man destined to find the One Piece and become King of the Pirates. Yes. I am that pirate captain. And,” he paused, checking to make sure you were paying attention, “a very busy, very important man. I’ve got, oh, ten minutes or so for you to decide how this is gonna go. So let’s get straight to it.” He turned back, pointing the knife at you. “Who are you, and what are you after?”

The accusatory tone of his voice took you aback. “Nothing… I’m not anybody,” you stammered out. “And this… this isn’t what it looks like, I swear.”

Buggy, to your surprise, relented after a second of considering your appeal, nodding understandingly. 

There was no transition from his look of sympathy to raising the knife and aiming it at you. By the time you realized he meant to throw it, you barely had a chance to yelp. The blade took a loud, thumping bite into the wood beside you. On your left side, of course. Where you couldn’t see it. You could feel it, though. The air displacement ruffled the fine hairs around your ear. If you had flinched in that direction, it probably would be in your skull. With your dizzy head aching and confused, you had no regulation to your fear or discomfort, your breathing dangerously unsteady and tears pricking the corner of your eyes. 

“Let me try a different question,” Buggy said before you could collect yourself, pulling out another knife. “Who else knows about this place?”  

“Nobody! I swear, nobody else. I was just…” You didn’t know what to say. It was all you could do to breathe the thick, heavy air and fight down the tide of nausea.  

“Just what?” Buggy asked, leaning in with raised eyebrows to show that he was listening intently. You opened and closed your mouth, unable to come up with the right words. Thoughts churned through the thick sludge in your head, getting stuck or lost or confused. 

“I’m so sorry,” you said, the stumbling apology coming out more naturally than anything else, an attempt to buy time while you organized your thoughts. “Please doh-don’t…. I’m so ss-sorry.” 

Buggy sighed, standing up straight and raising his hand to aim. 

“Nonono, please d-” You yelped louder this time, flinching away as the knife streaked through the air and stuck not even an inch away from your right cheek. You exhaled a pathetic little sob, whatever you were bound to shaking with your body. 

“Listen, honey buns,” Buggy said. “Drop the act. Stop the whining. I caught you, red handed, sneaking into my lair.” He pulled something out of his pocket. Not another knife, but a piece of paper which he unfolded, holding it up for you to see. His wanted poster, creased into sixths from the way you folded it to keep it close, to keep it hidden. “I found this in your bag. You know who I am, and you know where you are. You have to, so let’s do away with all the theatrics, okay?” 

You swallowed hard, nodding quickly in the hope that it would appease him. 

“Right now, this is a conversation,” Buggy said, gesturing between the two of you. “A light interrogation, really. But if you keep being uncooperative and wasting my time, it’s gonna go from being interrogate-y to being torture-y real quick. You don’t want that, right?” Although he was unmistakably threatening you, Buggy’s tone was more natural than before. There was a bluntness to it, an honesty. Men like him didn’t idly use words like torture. 

You sniffed, trying very hard to calm yourself down. This was a misunderstanding, so you just had to convince him. Simple as that. He would understand. You would make him understand.

“Right,” you agreed. 

“Fantastic. So,” he loudly clapped his hands together, “who else knows about this place?”

“Nobody, I promise… I’m really sorry I broke in,” you told him, speaking slowly so your words didn’t catch. “I just wanted to meet with you.” 

Buggy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, the hair hanging out from the sides of his hat swaying as his head tilted curiously. “You’re a fan?” he clarified. “That explains why you’re so pathetic. Well I hate to break it to you, but there’s a reason I only hold meet and greets after shows.” 

“No, that’s not why! I-I want to join your crew,” you said. “I came to ask you to let me join your crew.” 

He blinked twice, staring at you with obvious disbelief. “Excuse me, what?” 

“I want to be a pirate,” you told him, louder. “Please. Please let me join your crew.”

Buggy’s expression didn’t change, but you could see the rippling shift of incredulity, befuddlement, skepticism, and then amusement in his eyes. That emotion burst outward into a loud laugh, making you flinch. “That’s the best you can do?” he asked. “Ask to join my crew?” He looked at you again, laughing even harder. “I don’t know what’s funnier—that anybody would send you to spy on me, or that you’d think I would consider hiring you.” 

“I mean it!” you argued, humiliation and desperation seeping into the thousand other discomforts of your position. This wasn’t at all how you wanted this to go.

“Sweetheart,” Buggy said condescendingly, “even assuming I believe you, this is a pirate crew, not an afterschool club.”

“I know. I know what pirates do, I know what you do,” you told him. “I’ll do anything, whatever you want. Please, please, just give me a chance.”

He nodded, turning to pace as he thought about it. 

“Okay, let’s say that I buy this… this act of yours,” Buggy said. “Do you have any experience? Maintaining ships, reading maps, loading cannons. You know, basic stuff.”

There was a line you had prepared to answer this question, one that would paint you in the most charitable light. You remembered that, but you couldn’t remember the line. All you could give was the truth. “A little.”

He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Thought so. What about specialties? Unique skills? Any sort of talent that I can use in my show—anything at all. I mean other than,” he gestured vaguely in your direction, “that. We don’t need another one eyed midget. They’re surprisingly common.” 

“I’m not a midget,” you told him, nerves fading to incredulity. 

Buggy stepped back to size you up before seemingly conceding the point with a shrug. “And the eye?” He covered his left eye to illustrate. “Is that for a bit or something?” 

Your stomach twisted with a familiar lurch. Disgust. Shame. Phantom light in the dark. “It’s not.” 

“How’d you lose it?” 

“I didn’t… lose it.” 

“It’s still in there?” he asked excitedly, stepping forward and reaching to remove the bandana. “I have got to see this.” 

“No, please—please don’t,” you begged, trying to wriggle away from his hand. Pinned to the board with your hands bound above your head, there was nowhere to go. “Please don’t, please-” 

“Come on,” Buggy said, indifferent to your pleas as he pulled the sweat soaked fabric off of your left eye. “How bad could it be—AH!” He yelled in horror, jumping away as if you’d bitten him. 

The bandana hit the floor, leaving your ruined eye and its jagged scar exposed. You couldn’t hide. All you could do was flinch back, turning your head away. “I’m sorry,” you said, ready to continue apologizing before you realized that his shock had immediately dissolved into raucous laughter. “Why are you… why are you laughing?” you asked, pulling desperately against the chains. 

“I got you good,” Buggy said, his laughter subsiding. “The way you reacted, I thought that you’d be completely deformed. A real sideshow. But this…” He grabbed your chin, forcing it to the side so he could get a better look. “I couldn’t charge for this.”

“Please stop,” you begged, shaking off his grip and staring hard at his shoulder. 

“Ohhh. You’re really embarrassed about it.”

You didn’t say anything, focusing mostly on fighting the tears. 

“Okay, alright, yeah,” Buggy said, stepping back. “I think I’m starting to get why you would risk life and limb to beg me for a job. You grew up as a cute girl in a shithole town like this. A big fish in a little pond, as they say. Then, suddenly, BAM, you’re deformed, and, sure, they all say that it was tragic, but the truth is that they can’t stand to look at you. Even the people who loved you, the people you trusted, think you’re a freak. They abandoned you. So, without any other options, you come to me, pleading for me to give you a place amidst your fellow freaks. That about it?”

You didn’t say anything—what could you say to that?— which Buggy seemed to take as confirmation, nodding thoughtfully. 

“Well, go big or go home, right? As far as a starlet’s breakout role, you couldn’t go any bigger. Thing is, I’m not really looking for new acts. Not to mention your abysmal audition.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth, looking you up and down again. 

You could feel your chance slipping away. Just like that. Go big or go home, that’s what he said. 

“Please, Captain Buggy,” you begged, staring him in the eye despite how disquieting it was, despite how your skin crawled from exposing your left eye to somebody. Addressing him properly, at the very least, got his attention. “I promise that you won’t regret it. I’ll learn, I want to learn how to be a pirate, how to perform, all of it, everything. And if I can’t, I’ll do laundry and clean and cook, I have lots of experience with that. I don’t care what you ask me to do, if you let me join your crew, I’ll happily serve you for the rest of my life.”

Buggy didn’t respond right away. You thought—hoped—that it meant he understood how serious you were, but his expression gave you nothing. There wasn’t much light in the room in the first place, but somehow he found enough to shine unnervingly in his pale blue eyes. Somebody with a bright red clown nose shouldn’t have been able to look so intimidating, but the way he studied you burned with an uncomfortable intensity. It had been a while since anybody looked at you so frankly, so openly, without disgust or pity. 

“Why?” he finally asked. 

“Why…?” you repeated, confused.

“I get that you want to leave this place, and I even buy into your whole wanting to be a pirate thing, but, you know, aside from the obvious,” he gestured to himself, “why should I believe that you really want to serve me? You’re young and cute…ish, don’t you want freedom and empowerment and all those other things girls go on and on about?” 

Your eyebrows furrowed. “Why would I?” 

A moment of quiet that wasn’t quite silence but twice as heavy passed before a slow smile began to spread over Buggy’s face, and then—of all the bizarre, uncomfortable responses he could have—he laughed. “Oh, you’re broken, aren’t you?” he asked, clearly overjoyed by the revelation. “Well, I’m sold. I’ll have to start you on probation just in case you’re secretly up to no good. But, after that, you can audition for real. I’m sure I can find something you’ll be useful for.” 

His reaction gave you whiplash. The word ‘broken’ was obviously bad, but everything else was good. You had succeeded. Only, you didn’t know why. You were still trying to decide if being called cute-ish was a compliment or not. 

“Hey, just one more thing, okay?” Buggy asked, tapping your cheek. Standing mere inches away, he smiled a rictus grin. It wrinkled his eyes, but they were without life or pity or mercy. “If you’re lying to me about anything, I’ll carve some symmetry into your cute little face. You’ll thank me for it too. You won’t want to see what the guys will do to you after I toss you out there.”

“I’m not lying,” you said softly, shrinking back. “I promise.” 

“Great!” Buggy said, his demeanor immediately cheering up. “Let’s get you down.” He walked behind the board you were strung up on, and you let out a shaky exhale. “Brace yourself,” he called. You had no idea what that meant, or how you were supposed to brace yourself when there was nothing for you to brace yourself on. “Three… two…” 

He undid the lock, and the chains keeping you bound to the board went slack. You dropped hard, your limbs as heavy as lead. Luckily, your head was too light to feel anything when you hit the ground with a dull thump and the loud cacophony of rattling chains, spinning and blank and utterly empty. There was a suspended moment of floating, lighter than air itself. And then you were blinking rapidly and nauseous, pain shooting up your arms and knees. 

Buggy dropped a key in front of you, metal bouncing on the old concrete. 

“Unfortunately we didn’t bring any real props with us, so I had to improvise,” he said. With numb fingers, you grabbed the key and worked it into the locked cuff around your wrist. “You lucked out, if this were the real Wheel of Death, you’d be blowing chunks!” He paused, looking down at you. “Can you hurry this up?”

“Sorry,” you said. Your shaking hands kept missing the keyholes, but you finally got the last lock on your ankle open. The cuffs hadn’t broken skin, but your wrists and ankles were rubbed raw, ugly bruises already developing. You’d had worse.

“Alright, upsy daisy,” Buggy said, crouching down to take the key away and grab the only chain you hadn’t gotten out of—the one around your neck. 

It acted as a noose, giving you no other choice but to lurch upward with an unappealing choking sound, your head spinning all over again, the weightless itch tingling all the way down to the base of your spine. You stumbled forward, unintentionally falling against him. 

“Holy shit,” Buggy exclaimed, helping you stand up straight with a hand on your shoulder. “I didn’t know girls came in fun size. Legally, at least. Are you sure you’re not just like… the maxiest midget?” 

“‘m dizzy,” you muttered, swaying despite his support. 

“That’s not really… Ah, whatever. Hey, at least if you fall, you don’t have that far to go.”

“I’m… I’m okay,” you finally said, which was mostly true. Breathing slow, steady breaths helped, and then you shook your head a little. The bump on the back of it throbbed painfully, and you’d have bruises on your knees the size of apples, but you would survive. You were still trying to get control over your body. It was heavy and unwieldy, although part of that must have been the exhaustion. 

“If you need to vomit, make sure to aim away from me,” he said. That was about all the warning you got before he decided it was time to go, dragging you along behind him like a dog on a leash. 

You realized you were leaving your bandana behind, your left eye uncovered, and reared back, trying to stop him. “Wait, I have to grab my-” 

“No time,” he said, talking over you and tugging again at the chain. 

There was nothing you could do but stumble over your own feet to keep up with him as he led you through the cluttered and dark storage area. You felt a tiny bit of relief that you were still in the familiar decaying buildings northside. The old warehouses were dark, dank, and dingy. Easily defended and difficult to navigate, perfect for criminals to hide out in. You knew them very well, and that helped orient you.  

"As I’m sure you noticed, I’m running a bit of a skeleton crew here. The rest aren’t coming ‘til the grand finale,” Buggy said, leading you into the main warehouse space by the chain around your neck like it was completely normal. The awful smell of rot and decay was only compounded by a sickly sweet, chalky scent you didn’t recognize. Gray sunshine flooded in through the broken windows around the high ceilings, piercingly bright. “And after that, we’re gonna blow this town.”

You didn’t respond, growing even more skittish. The two of you drew the attention of the people scattered around. Some were lounging, others were training. All of them turned to look at you, watching with the dark, focused stare of hungry dogs. Colorfully dressed, very dangerous dogs. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have an introduction to make!” Buggy called in a loud enough voice to fill the large space. “Crew, new girl. New girl, crew. Make sure to give her a nice, warm welcome." None of them spoke or reacted, watching you with varying degrees of hostility. Buggy pulled you forward a few steps so he could whisper to you. “See that guy?” he asked, pointing to a bald man with square features and an especially dark glare. “That’s Ivo. He was the one who caught you. To be completely honest, I think he’s still a little angry that he didn't get to keep you. If I were you, I’d try to stay on his good side.”

“How?” you asked, your uneasy stomach sinking further, but Buggy was already preoccupied with something else. 

“Oh, hey-” he called, flagging down a woman who was leaning against one of the steel supports. You stumbled behind him, holding the chain around your neck to ease the pressure. “Crina, I have got a very important job for you.” 

The woman slowly looked from Buggy to you, giving you a weighty once-over with dark, kohl-lined eyes. Her clothes were different from the rest, draped with beads and loose and layered in shades of purple. Beneath the mystique, however, you felt the same hardness you recognized in all the pirate’s faces. “You want me to look after the little rat,” she said with an accent you didn’t recognize.

"God, it’s like you can read minds or something,” Buggy said, laughing. “Anyway, yes. Make sure she doesn’t get up to anything naughty while I’m gone. In fact, don’t let her out of your sight.” 

“With all due respect,” Crina said, “why not just kill her?” 

“Because I don’t want her dead,” Buggy snapped, suddenly irritated. If Crina was surprised or off put by the abrupt change of his mood, she didn’t show it. 

“Of course, captain.”  

“I thought I saw some cages over there,” Buggy said, gesturing vaguely and forcing the chain into Crina’s hand. “Stick her in one of those. In the back, away from any prying eyes.”  

“A cage?” you asked.

“As fun as it is to see you all chained up,” Buggy said. “I worry that it might send the wrong message. Out of sight, out of mind—I don’t need you distracting my crew. They’re planning a very big surprise party. If you behave, I might be able to find some time for you later. Sound good?” 

You nodded, almost surprised by how good that sounded. He ruffled your hair before turning away, barking orders to some of the men. 

“Let’s go,” Crina said, pulling your attention back to her. “We have our orders.”

The cage Crina put you in, one out of several bolted to the floor in the corner out of the way from the main space, had just enough room for you to sit slouched, or lay curled on your side, meant for big dogs or small humans. There was a market for both, and you knew that this warehouse had likely housed both. 

The old, dilapidated buildings had been out of use for a long time, as long as you could remember. Barley Village had been originally built to be close to the mineral deposits, but as those dried up and industry trended towards the water, southward expansion left all of the old buildings empty and rotting. There was always talk about tearing them down, but it was only ever talk. One time you were told that some people wanted to keep the buildings available to people who wished for some privacy. But when you asked your dad if that was true, he got angry, telling you that was a lie, that he would never let that happen. He said it would just be too expensive to take them down, and that there was really no point in it.

But he also told you to never, ever spend time northside. Of all of the rules he gave you, that was the only one you ever truly disobeyed. You had no idea how many times you had gotten in trouble for playing here, climbing up rusted stairs and crossing the support beams up by the ceiling, using rocks to knock out the jagged edges of broken glass from the windows so you could go onto the rooftops. Your health problems made it difficult, and sometimes impossible, but you were patient. Plus, that had been before the accident, when your coordination was still good.

Back then, you didn’t worry about the many dangers that lurked here, and you certainly didn’t believe you could be hurt. You were too entranced by the world you created for yourself. The only thing you worried about was the beatings you earned when you got caught. Dad used to tell you that if you kept disobeying him by going northside, you’d wind up locked in one of these cages—or worse. It took you a while to think of the word, because it wasn’t funny, but it also was. Ironic. It was ironic.

You couldn’t even imagine what kind of reaction he would have to what you had done now, what punishment you would earn. It would be bad. You knew it would be very bad. 

Better not to think about it. Falling unconscious after being hit on the head was the most you had slept for the previous two days. It was the level of exhaustion that you could be staring down the business end of a sword with indifferent, sleepy eyes. Being locked up was bad, very bad, but you were content to lay listlessly on your side.

At some point, you must have fallen asleep because you weren’t entirely conscious when somebody kicked the front of your cage. “Hey, wake up.” Your physical response was to startle, jolting you awake enough to flinch away from the violence. But it was only Crina who crouched in front of the cage. “I have food for you. And medicine for the headache. I’m going let you out, and I suggest you don’t try to run. If the guys get a hold of you, I won’t stop them.”

“I won’t run,” you told her, your voice hoarse, your eyes fixed on what she had brought. A bowl of something that looked like stew and a bottle. More than food, you wanted water. Crina undid the lock and you shuffled out of the cage. Your head spun just as badly as it had when you dropped onto the floor earlier, your vision crawling with darkness and stomach heaving unhappily. She was right about the headache. It wasn’t a pain you ever got used to, no matter how many days you spent laid out from one. After an uneasy moment, you sat on the floor, grabbing the water and eagerly uncapping it. 

“Hand,” Crina said, holding out a glass bottle. You allowed her to shake two capsules into your palm, tossing them into your mouth before taking in a blessedly wet mouthful of water. It soothed your tongue and throat like a salve, although you knew your stomach wouldn’t be quite so happy to receive anything. The stew’s scent alone made your stomach clench and churn with equal parts hunger and nausea. Slow. You had to take it slow. 

“Thank you,” you told her, picking up the bowl. She’d brought a wrapped sailor’s biscuit to eat it with. Not very appetizing, but you hadn’t eaten much more than you slept. It could have been saw dust and you would have been grateful. 

“I have your bag,” she said to fill the silence as you ate, pushing the limp canvas towards you. “They took anything that looked valuable, but your clothes are all there. They need to be washed. I’ll lend you something to wear in the meantime.”

Since your mouth was full, you nodded your thanks.

“While you eat, I’m going to talk. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” Crina said. “You don’t strike me as the talkative type.”

She didn’t say that in an accusatory tone, but it still caused your heart to skip with anxiety. The fear had to be irrational, it wasn’t as if you had lied to Captain Buggy, so what did you have to worry about? Besides, only the guilty feared scrutiny, that was a favored line of your dad’s. 

“There’s a man in town asking if anyone has seen a girl. Petite. Missing an eye. Mentally unwell. He’s concerned that she might have gotten lost somewhere,” Crina told you. “From what I gather, her father is a pillar of the community. They’re all very worried.” 

You averted your gaze, anxiously pulling your hair to cover your left eye. Of course Randall would be looking for you, although you had hoped you would have more time before he noticed your absence. It didn’t matter that you left in such a way to raise as little suspicion as possible, or that you were an adult, or that you didn’t want to be found. Your dad asked him to be your keeper while he was gone, and Randall did as your father said. Everybody did. 

“Finish your food,” Crina prompted. “It’s worse when it’s cold.” 

Right. You started eating again, your movements mechanical. She said nothing, and you had nothing to say. 

“Everybody has their reasons for turning to piracy, and they’re not always pleasant,” Crina suddenly said. “Unless it interferes with my own business, I don’t care about who you were and why you ran away. It was a stupid choice, I think you know that. I won’t try and convince you to leave. Buggy seems to like you, so you wouldn’t be able to go anyway. But you need to understand that there will be consequences. The life you had before, no matter how terrible, did not prepare you for the life you’ve thrown yourself into.”

You stared hard at the bowl, thinking about that. It was true, you had to accept that you had blindly stumbled into a world you knew nothing about. But what choice did you have? The things that led you to this point were arranged like the rusty, creaky rungs of a ladder scaling the side of a building. Climbing up had always been the easy part, it was the inevitable descent that gave you trouble. You had to go slow, one rung at a time, blindly feeling with your toes, holding on with sweaty fingers, not looking up and not looking down because once you were on the ladder, you could only keep going. The first rung was spotting the Buggy Pirates, which you only did because you were sulking around the docks after seeing your father off on his trip. You only recognized the crew because your dad kept track of pirate captains with significant bounties. You only had the courage to sneak away from your house because dad was too far away to stop you. You only had the ability to scope out Buggy’s temporary hideout because of how much time you spent northside when you were younger. Those things all connected and followed so naturally and you didn’t know if fate existed, but you knew for a fact that you wouldn’t have wound up here on your own volition. It wasn’t a choice you made, it was the only way to get down from the roof that you had been stranded on for so long.

“I’ll give you some advice,” Crina continued, her tone lighter, “and I suggest you listen. You’re young and pretty, and you wouldn’t be the first to try and use that to get an advantage. It might work for a while, but men will get bored and your looks will fade. Before long you’ll be spat out into a cheap whorehouse with a couple of children you can’t afford and a hell of a rash.” 

The whiplash from your thoughts to the conclusion she had drawn made your stomach twist with disgust. “No,” you said. Was that what she thought of you? Even if the idea was utterly ridiculous, shame rolled uncomfortable through you. “I would never—I could never ever do that.” 

“Don’t be naive,” Crina said, rolling her eyes. “The boys you’re used to are disgusted by that scar, but the kind of men you’ll meet from now on won’t be. If your low self-esteem dictates who you let between your legs, you’ll find yourself in the gutter. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t sleep with men to get an advantage if that’s an option, only that you must be smart about it.” 

You pulled your hair forward again, shaking your head clear of what she was saying. She didn’t understand. It wasn’t the assumption that men would be repulsed by your scar—which they would be, you knew that—but that you didn’t have it in you to invite or manipulate male attention. In so many ways you were already ruined, but to stoop down to letting other men touch you would be too far, it would destroy you.

“Assuming you live past tomorrow night,” Crina continued, “get a knife and figure out how to use it. The men aren’t going to accept you as a member of the crew until you prove yourself. So if anybody gets too close, you prove yourself with blood.” 

“Do you think they’ll try to hurt me?” 

“I think you look like an easy target,” she said. “And I know you have no concept of self preservation or defense.”

“Yes, I do,” you said, frowning. You had made it this far, after all. That was more than anybody would have thought of you. 

“You don’t,” she said plainly. “The tablets I gave you are for treating pain, but imagine if they weren’t. You didn’t so much as ask me to clarify what they were.” 

You opened your mouth to argue, and closed it, shame squeezing your throat. You hadn’t even thought about that.

“It might not matter anyway,” she said, “depending on Buggy’s reasons for keeping you.”

“What do you mean?” 

Crina gave you a long, pitying look and you could tell there was something she wanted to say, something she was holding back. Eventually she shrugged. “That is between the two of you.”

You wanted to push for more, confused by the cryptic answer, but you didn’t. You could tell by the hard look on her face that she wouldn’t tell you anyway. 

“One more thing. The most important thing,” Crina told you, leaning close so she could whisper. “Never, ever mention the captain’s nose. In fact, never mention noses at all.” 

“His nose?” you repeated softly. “Is it… is it real?” 

“What did I just say?” she asked sharply. “He killed a few of the last new recruits for saying something that sounded like nose while he was in a bad mood.”

“He… killed them?” you asked. 

“Buggy is a very temperamental man,” she said, leaning back. “Try not to get on his bad side.”

“It sounds like you don’t like him.” 

“I do, actually. God knows why. Are you finished?” 

“Yes, thank you.” 

“Come on then,” Crina told you, getting to her feet and dusting herself off. “There’s running water on the other side. I’ll keep watch so you can clean up.”   

Although birds called and the breeze carried all sorts of noises from Barley Village, none of it really reached the northside. A solemn graveyard hush settled heavy between the wreckage of ruined buildings, drafty even in broad daylight. No ghosts hid in the shadows, no historical tragedy marred its name, but there remained the haunted imprint of people who were no longer around. 

Before setting you on your task of the day, Crina had given you a dress of hers to wear while your own clothes dried in the sun. You swam in it, but a sash at the waist made the fit look somewhat intentional and the long sleeves hid the ugly bruises cuffing your wrists. That, combined with having slept the previous night and most of the day, left you feeling oddly refreshed. Sure, all of the sleep had been in a cage and the only ‘bath’ you had was a couple of minutes alone with a spout that spat freezing water and a washcloth, but it was better than yesterday. Better than the day before that too, save for the bruises and big goose egg bump on the back of your head.  

Despite the headache, you were glad to be given something to do. The task wasn’t difficult. Busywork that kept you out of the way. Checking to ensure that everything which would be loaded on the ship was documented, organized, and ready for transport. It wasn’t entirely unlike what you had done in the past and, you imagined, would be doing in the future. It was, however, the opposite way around. The goods were obviously looted, you were creating a list to know exactly what and how much of it had been stolen. 

Vinegar, oil, wax.

You used the end of the pen to scratch beneath your bandana, which Crina had kindly retrieved for you. Sometimes the scar got itchy, like it had when it was healing. 

Twine, needles, thread. 

There was a particular smell to supply crates like these. Something to do with the place they were stored, or where they were made. Even now, years since you had been on a ship, it was overwhelmingly familiar. It made your stomach ache and chest clench, although you weren’t sure which quality of the scent was so unsettling. 

You scratched the scar again.

Vinegar, oil- 

Wait, you had already done that. Annoyed, you crossed out those words and crouched down to get into the next crate. Rope. It was coiled in tight loops like a huge snake, coarse beneath your fingers. Anything that was strong enough to endure the fury of the sea had to be coarse. Good rope was vital on a ship, you knew that even with your limited experience. Touching it reminded you of the time your dad tried to show you how to tie knots, and then subsequently had to treat your rope burn.

What would he think when he returned? Retired Marine or not, he was deeply involved with northside business and law. Missing supplies, missing daughter. Sometimes you felt an acidic sort of pleasure when imagining his reaction to your absence, but usually it was just dread.

Or worse. Prickling paranoia. You could run, for a time. But that was all it was. Running. He used to be a Marine, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to find you. When you were younger, the thought gave you comfort. 

But you didn’t want to think about that. Not at all. Not ever again. You stared very hard at the rope, desperate to put those thoughts out of your mind. 

You stared and stared and stared and-

Somebody grabbed you around the bicep, dragging you to your feet and forcing you back to reality. Yelping in fear, you were nearly knocked back down from the bloodrush dizziness of standing up too fast, saved only by the crates. 

“Good god, girl,” the unfamiliar man said, taking a step back, clearly put off by your reaction. “Are you deaf or something? I hollered at you three or four times. Were you sleeping?” 

Putting a hand to your racing heart, you looked from him to the still open crate and the notepad you had abandoned mid-task. You had no idea how long you had been sitting there. Long enough for your foot to go numb, prickling with pins and needles now that you were standing up. 

“I’m sorry,” you told him.

“The captain wants to see you. It’s urgent,” he said. When you didn’t immediately respond, still orienting yourself, he sighed impatiently and grabbed your elbow, physically dragging you away. You stumbled to keep up, trying very hard to avoid falling. “If Buggy asks why you took so long, you better tell him it was your fault.”

“I will,” you said to appease him, attempting to shake off his hand before realizing that it was pointless. “Please slow down.” 

“Not my fault you’ve got stumpy legs,” he said. “Keep up.” 

The unfairness of that stung, but you didn’t have much choice. You had a feeling that he’d keep on pulling you along even if it meant dragging you across the ground. 

“Where are we going?” you asked, embarrassingly out of breath. 

“There,” he said, nodding to one of the waterfront buildings. At least it was close. You never strayed so close to the water, the buildings were too squat to make for fun exploration and too exposed to give cover. 

The pirate released you when you got to the door, leaving you winded and scared. You adjusted your bandana and tried to catch your breath. “Don’t forget to tell him it was your fault it took so long, not mine,” he said, opening the door.

“I won’t,” you promised, the words papery thin on your dry tongue.  

You were in trouble. You had no idea what you might have done, but there had to be something. Why would you be summoned like this otherwise? A very bad feeling pressed against your sternum, but you forced yourself to walk forward. The door shut behind you. Inside, the air was dark and cool and wet, sending a little shiver down your spine. 

Buggy stood in the middle of the room, the only place where the sun found its way between the mangled teeth of glass and steel that used to be windows, his own little spotlight amidst the ruins. There were three other men on the edges of the light, their backs to you. One of them was bound. You did not like this. 

“There she is!” Buggy exclaimed, inviting you forward with his arms spread wide. “Come on, don’t be shy. Especially not after keeping us waiting so long. Your friend over here could hardly handle the suspense. 

Rocks and broken glass crunched beneath your feet as you approached them. Once you got close enough, finally, you could see the faces of the other men. One was the square-featured, angry man Buggy called Ivo. Another, a man you didn’t know. And the third, the one bound with a busted lip and developing black eye—

Randall called your name, trying to escape and rush to your side. Ivo grabbed him, pressing the blade of his knife against his throat.

“See, I told you, they’re working together,” Ivo said, glaring at you. “She tipped him off. No doubt this place will be swarming with the law before long.”

You stood completely still, staring at Randall with the steadily rising tide of panic sloshing in your stomach. After everything you had done to misdirect him, the note you left to beg he didn’t follow, the trouble you had put yourself through to keep from being seen, he was still here. 

“Are you okay?” Randall asked, looking you up and down frantically, concerned in a way he never had looked before. “Did they hurt you?” 

“I told you, she’s fine,” Buggy said with a grin. “I mean, yeah, Ivo over there did give her a little knock on the ole noggin—a love tap, really—but the eye was already like that when we found her.” 

“I wasn’t asking you,” Randall said, glaring at Buggy. 

“Shut up,” Ivo said, pressing the knife close enough to Randall’s throat that it broke skin. 

“No, no, let him go,” Buggy ordered casually, waving his hand. “He’s not gonna do anything stupid.” He threw an arm around your shoulder. “Not when I’ve got her.” 

Ivo reluctantly complied, releasing Randall. He watched you intently, and you knew what he was thinking. How could he save you?  

“Ivo over there thinks that the two of you are working together,” Buggy told you, smiling. His arm was heavy around your shoulders, oppressively so. “He thinks that we should kill you both.” 

“I’m not—I wouldn’t,” you told him. 

“And see, I wanna believe you. I really do. But he’s not talking, and,” Buggy ran his finger over your right cheek, reminding you of his threat from yesterday, “I’m starting to worry you’ve been lying to me.”

“I’m not,” you said, ice cold dread dripping into your veins a drop at a time. You fought your discomfort and forced yourself to meet his eyes, hoping he could see your sincerity. “I promise I’m not.” 

“Then how did he find this place?” 

“I don’t… I don’t know…”

“She used to hide here when we were kids,” Randall answered. “I thought she ran away, not that you freaks had kidnapped her. If I had known I’d find pirates here, I would have come armed.”

“Is that true?” Buggy asked you, pulling you even closer. Close enough to be embarrassing, to give the wrong impression, especially when he was stroking your cheek with a sort of affection that didn’t mesh with the danger in his blue eyes.

“I told you it is. Let her go, clown!” Randall shouted. His voice was loud enough to echo, and harsh enough to make you wince. That sort of rage wasn’t one you expected from him, but it was familiar all the same. 

“Oh, wow,” Buggy said with a laugh, looking up at him. “Is that jealousy I hear? She didn’t tell me she was leaving behind a boyfriend.” 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you said softly, your insides twisting at the thought. 

“Really?” Buggy asked. He shrugged, and looked at Randall. “If you’re not doing this because you want to have sex with her, why are you here?” 

“I am a dear friend—both to her and her dad,” Randall answered. “He asked me to look after her because she… She’s not in a sound state of mind. And she’s the only family he has left. Without her, he’ll have nothing.” He grit his teeth. “Take me, kill me if you’re that thirsty for blood, but let her go. Please.”

“You’re a real knight in shining armor. Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but she came here all on her own,” Buggy said, releasing you to approach him instead. “She begged to join my crew, got down on her knees and told me that she would be happy to serve me for the rest of her life. It was the most adorable thing.”

“No,” Randall said, his face twisting with disgust. “You’re lying. She wouldn’t do that.”

“Ask her yourself,” Buggy invited, stepping aside and sweeping out his arm. All eyes landed on you like a spotlight. Blood rushed in your ears, and you felt dizzy with it, ready to pass out on the spot. When you looked at Buggy, he smiled and nodded encouragingly. 

“It’s true,” you said.

“No. That is impossible,” Randall said. “This is insane. You are mad, you cannot make decisions like this for yourself.” You stared at his feet, your hands balled into fists. You were not crazy. You were not. That had to be true. “Whatever hysterics brought you here, give it up. These are pirates.”

“I’m a pirate too,” you declared, your hands forming fists at your sides. You weren’t crazy, or mad. You were thinking very clearly, more than you had in a while. 

“No, you are your father’s daughter,” Randall insisted, loud enough to make you flinch. “Can you imagine the agony he would feel hearing you say that?”

Your breathing was too fast, rapid enough to make your head spin. You kept shaking your head, tears flying off of your cheek, but you couldn’t recall when you had begun to cry. “I don’t care.” 

“Don’t care…? This bastard has already gotten into your head,” Randall said. “He has poisoned your broken mind with his lies and manipulations, please don’t let this go any further.”

You shook your head again, but there was nothing you could think of to say. You didn’t want to talk anymore, you just wanted this to be over. 

“Believe me, as much as I would love to claim otherwise, I had nothing to do with this,” Buggy said, raising his hands innocently. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself. Think about what would drive a girl like this into the arms of a pirate. A broken heart, maybe? Was that your doing, lover boy? Did you break her heart? Make her feel like she wasn’t good enough?” 

“Keep your big goddamned nose out of our business, clown,” Randall said. 

The other pirates audibly gasped, and you could feel the sudden zap of tension in the air. Buggy’s taunting smile froze in place, his posture icing over like a statue. And then, a second later, he was rushing at Randall, burying his fist in the other man’s stomach. Randall crumpled onto his knees with a heavy grunt and you waited for something else, something worse. Crina said that Buggy had killed over jokes about his nose, and, right then, you believed it.

Nothing happened. You watched, frozen, as Buggy breathed in deeply, his shoulders rising and falling with it, and then he raised a hand.  

“New girl,” he called, snapping to beckon you closer. You obliged, rushing to his side. He didn’t look angry, not like you feared he would. Instead, he smiled. It was a mean smile, a frightening one. But a smile all the same. “Are you ready for your big moment?”   

“What?” 

“Your audition! I thought of the perfect act for you. Kill him.” 

You looked down at Randall, he was clearly still in pain, his eyes watering as he looked up at you. “I can’t,” you whispered, shaking your head again.  

“You can and will. Assuming you want to remain on my crew. Otherwise I’ll kill him and you’ll have to explain to daddy why prince charming was here in the first place.” He held out his hand towards Ivo. “Knife.” When he got it, Buggy flipped the knife handle first, holding it to you with a flourish. “You’re up, babydoll.”

“She won’t do it, clown,” Randall said through grit teeth. 

“Of course she will,” Buggy said. “For me.” 

As if moving through the dusky haze of a dream, you took the knife, wrapping your sweaty hand around the grip. The way Buggy smiled in response made your heart flutter, something to cling to amidst the horror and disgust. It didn’t feel real anymore. How could it be real? 

“I don’t know what to do.” Were those your words? Your voice?

Buggy laughed. “Of course you don’t,” he said, circling behind Randall. “C’mere, I’ll help you.” 

Randall was shouting and pleading, but Buggy had grabbed a fistfull of his hair to keep him from escaping. 

“You’ve gotta hold him still,” Buggy told you. “Like this, see?”  

“-don’t do this, please. You can’t… I love you!” 

You got a fistful of Randall’s hair, making him cry out in pain. There was no pleasure in the sound, only a roiling sense of disgust. It would be better when he was dead, and then he wouldn’t be in pain. 

“God you’re short,” Buggy said as he adjusted you into place, right between him and Randall. “You’ll be better off going for their ankles.” He wrapped his hand around yours, getting a good grip on the knife and holding it still. 

“-when he gets bored of fucking you. That’s all pirates do, rape and murder. You’ll never be one of them, you’ll just-”

“Start on one side and move to the other, easy as that,” Buggy said comfortingly, resting his chin against the side of your head. 

“-he doesn’t kill you, your dad will. Do you really think you’ll ever be able to hide from him?” 

Moving slowly, through a dream, you put the knife on the left side of Randall’s neck. It was no different from what a butcher did, really. 

Breath in. Pull. You instinctively locked up at the sound of Randall’s screams and the resistance of his flesh, but Buggy forced your hand, pulling the blade deep into his neck and then fast to the side. The knife got caught part way through, stuck in something hard. You tried to saw through it and Randall made an inhuman noise of agony. Buggy had to help you unstick it, to follow through until the knife slashed that horrifying scream short and then there was just a sort of gurgling sound and you didn’t know if it was because he was still alive or if it was an automatic process. 

There was so much blood, and it was hot, burning you. For some reason, you hadn’t anticipated the messy scarlet spray. From the deep slice came more blood. More, and more still. Randall’s heavy, limp body dropped onto the floor into a puddle of it, although you weren’t sure when you let go of his hair. Buggy released your hand, but you didn’t drop the knife, holding it in a death grip as blood streamed like red veins down your hand and wrist, down the blade and all the way to its tip before dripping to the dirty floor. The tang of iron filled your lungs. You shook all over, all the way down inside, your bones and organs shivering. It was your heart. It pounded frantically, like butterfly wings. And your breathing. Wheezing, gasping, gurgling like Randall’s had before he fell.

Your mouth opened to exhale, but there was nothing there. No air, no words. Nothing. Your cold gaze turned to look at Buggy, confused as to what you were supposed to do next. He had led you this far, but now you were lost. He smiled, and laughed, and took the knife away from you, tossing it to the side where it clanged and slid away. 

And then he folded you into his arms, your head pressed against his chest. His heartbeat was firm and steady, and he was so warm. He smelled of gunpowder and salty sea air and greasepaint and the natural warm scent of his skin. You clung to that, breathing in deep to excise the scent of blood. 

“Congratulations, babydoll,” Buggy told you. “Looks like you just got the part.” 

The first firecracker went off not long after the sun had gone down, kicking off the surprise party with an especially loud zip and then a bang and a bursting sizzle. “It’s a surprise party,” Buggy told you, his face illuminated by the flash of red. “As in, the people who live here are going to be so surprised by the party I’m throwing for my crew. Get it?” 

A chain of firecrackers followed the first, a show that the pirates set off amidst a barrage of explosions, lighting up the sky with brilliant colors and smoke, making the earth tremble beneath your feet. They acted as distraction and lure, drawing people further into the town and inviting the ship that had been lurking nearby to enter the harbor. 

And after that came the chaos. 

Many things happened that you were aware of, if only passively. Leaving the northside and then Barley Village, waiting at the dock, and then boarding the ship as men and women in colorful attire flooded the yard, overtaking the few armed guards. You were told to sit on the deck and wait, so you did. Aware of it all—noxious sulfur and smoke filling the air, thunderous claps of explosives, popping gunshots, screaming voices, roaring fires—but uninvolved. There was a sense of great quiet. Not outside where things were loud and violent and scary, but inside. You were very quiet on the inside. Far away from everything and everyone else. 

Blood flaked off of your skin, caking beneath the nails when you scratched your arm. It would have been nice to wash it off, but you didn’t know where you would go for that, and you didn’t want to get up.

“Yoo-hoo, is anybody in there?” 

A gloved hand waved in front of your face. 

You let out a hoarse scream, nearly tipping backwards from how violently you startled. It didn’t take long for you to realize how overblown the reaction was, Buggy’s laughter made the point quite clearly. 

“What was that?” he asked, almost laughing too hard to get the words out. He stood above you without his coat and hat, although he kept the striped headscarf, and a bottle tucked under his arm. 

“You scared me,” you told him, a hand on your racing heart.

“That noise you just made though,” he said, still laughing. “It sounded like one of those scream-y fireworks.”

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“Your fault, not mine. I was trying to talk to you, but you just sat there. I thought it was your eye that didn’t work, not your ears.”

“I guess I… zoned out a little.” 

“No shit. Ah, that was good,” Buggy said as his laughter subsided. “I had no idea human beings could even make sounds like that.” Letting out a big breath to settle himself, he sat down next to you. Very close, far closer than you would have, almost touching. “Kinda makes me wonder what other kinds of sounds you can make.” 

“I know, it’s annoying,” you said, staring hard at the deck. “I’m sorry.” 

Buggy laughed at that too, shaking his head. “You really have no clue, do you?” he asked. “Is it weird that I’m into it?” 

“Into what?” you asked. “I’m sorry, I… don’t understand.” 

“I know you don’t, and that’s okay,” he said with a mocking sort of indulgence, patting your head. “Anyway, I had a little business in town and snagged this from some rich guy’s house.” He held up a bottle by the neck and swished its contents a little for effect. “We’re going to celebrate.” 

“Wouldn’t you rather be out there?” you asked, the first coherent question that came to your mind as it scrambled to make sense of what he had just said. 

“Between you and me, this,” Buggy said with a confidential hush, gesturing to your burning town, “isn’t my thing. It’s a reward for my freaks, gives ‘em an outlet to express themselves artistically. I prefer a more… performative platform. True art deserves a spotlight and an audience.” He waved that away, smiling. “But this isn’t about me, it’s about you.” 

“Me?”

“You really impressed me earlier. I mean, yeah, your technique needs polish, and you’ve got no stage presence to speak of, but you displayed raw talent. I really think you have a shot at success, sweetheart. Stick with me, and I’ll make something out of you yet.” 

“Thank you,” you said softly, shying away from thinking about earlier. The praise though, that was heady. That made you feel warm. 

Buggy popped the cork off the bottle, taking a drink straight from it and smacking his lips appreciatively. “You like sweet things, right?” 

“I-” 

“You’ll love this then. Here, try it.” 

You eyed the bottle he was proffering to you warily. Alcohol was something you were familiar with, but you could count on your fingers the number of times you had actually tasted it. “I don’t know…” you said, trying to think of ways to reject drinking without seeming ungrateful.   

“You’re a pirate now, so you’ve gotta learn to drink like one,” Buggy told you, pushing it into your hand. “What’s the worst that could happen?” 

You sniffed the open lip, surprised by the sweetness. It didn’t smell as strongly of alcohol as you feared. Not like what your father drank. Maybe it would be okay. Trying to avoid embarrassing yourself, you tipped the bottle back just like he had. That was a mistake. It didn’t smell like alcohol, but you could taste it—feel it, even. Panicked by your body’s natural response to expel it, you swallowed as much as you could, coughing out the rest. Red liquid drooled down your chin, staining the dress that was already ruined with dried blood. Buggy laughed. A little at first, and then a lot. 

Flushing, you wiped your mouth.

“Oh, don’t be like that. That was hilarious,” Buggy told you. You looked away, even more embarrassed. “Your face was priceless. You threw that back with the confidence of a real fire-hazard, saggy skinned, dead eyed alcoholic. You were so serious about it too, and then… Good lord.”

“I didn’t know!” you said, trying and failing not to sound shrill. 

“It’s okay, you’ve got me to help you now. Try it again, but don’t be so greedy. Baby sips.” 

“No, thank you,” you said, holding the bottle back to him. 

“Drink. That’s an order,” he said, pushing it back to you. 

That gave you pause. “Do you mean that?” you asked. 

He nodded, urging you on. 

Your shoulders drooped in defeat. Trepidatiously, you took a small sip. At least you didn’t hack it back up this time. While the taste was sweet, the burn was not. It rose up like smoke into your head, you could feel it.  

“What if I get drunk?” you asked. 

“Oh, you’re going to get drunk, captain’s orders,” Buggy said with a grin. “I can’t stand watching you sit around moping about killing that guy. Besides, you’re a pirate now.”

The little ball of anxiety deep in your gut doubled. This was wrong, you knew it was. Or maybe you were wrong, and Buggy was right. You didn’t know. 

“I don’t want to embarrass myself,” you muttered.

“As long as you don’t jump into the water or shit yourself, you’ll be fine…” You looked at him, horrified. “Joking! C’mon, I’ve taken good care of you so far, haven’t I? You’ll be fine.”

The way he laughed made you want to believe him. He was your captain now. You nodded seriously and, steeling yourself, took another drink. And another. 

“See? It’s good, right?” Buggy asked, holding out his hand for the bottle. 

You licked your lips, cleaning up the lingering sweetness. “It is. Thank you,” you said, unable to keep yourself from admiring the way his throat worked as he swallowed, the view unfortunately obscured by his cravat. 

The perverse thought took you by surprise. Was it the alcohol? Already, your head was spinning, your thoughts a little more disorganized. It wasn’t like the quiet, empty feeling of before. It was warm and distant, it made your shoulders relax, the anxiety and uncertainty of before fading. This was a good idea, you already felt so much better. When he passed the bottle back, you didn’t have to be prompted to imbibe, chasing that feeling.   

“I don’t mean to pry, but when that guy back there mentioned your dad, it really seemed to get to you,” Buggy said. “What, did daddy not love you? Or maybe he loved you a little too much.”

You didn’t want to talk about that. You didn’t want to think about it. You took another big drink. 

On the horizon, the town was utterly ablaze. As the night grew darker, the flames rose higher. Which building was burning so brightly? It belched thick, black smoke into the night sky. Who was in it? Anybody you knew?

“Don’t wanna talk about it, hm? That’s fine,” Buggy said, stealing the bottle back. “With any luck, my freaks’ll kill him tonight, eh? Then you’ll really be free.” 

“He’s gone right now,” you said, your words soft and slurring together. “Out of town.” What would he think of the smoldering ashes? Would he believe you had perished in the flame? Somehow, you doubted that. He would know what you had done. There was no chance of freedom, not for you. 

“That’s even better,” Buggy said.  

Your eyebrows furrowed as you turned to him, both in confusion and disbelief. “How?” 

“Because, babydoll,” Buggy told you, shaking your shoulder to make sure you were paying attention. “It’s good to have somebody to hate—somebody to prove wrong. He tried to convince you that you’re crazy, he tried to keep you from ever being yourself. That pain and anger made you weak. But you’re not weak anymore. Tonight, I showed you how to be strong. It’s not enough to tell those assholes that they’re wrong, you have to prove it to them. That’s what tonight was about, right? You proved to your dad, to everybody, that you’re stronger than they thought. And, hey, you proved it to me, too. I wasn’t sure about you at first, but I changed my mind.” He threw an arm around you, pulling you close. “I like you, kiddo. A lot.” 

“I like you too,” you said, relaxing into the little side hug, very aware of every place his bare arm met your bare shoulders and neck. The alcohol had stoked a nice blaze in your stomach and chest, making your head spin in a way you didn’t mind that much. Smoothing the colors, softening the air, making you want to lean into his touch, made you crave more of it. 

Buggy pulled away, leaving the bottle in your hands. You felt a little cold without him.  

“You know,” he said, smiling at you. The far off flames glinted mischievously in his eyes. The flaring reds and oranges highlighted his cheekbones too, defined the sharpness of his jaw. You were caught off guard by how viscerally you reacted to the thought that he was handsome, your filterless mind caught in an endless loop of focusing on the fact. “Burning down this shithole is nothing compared to what I will do. The towns I’ll raze to the ground, the treasure I’ll steal, the shows I’ll put on. Now that I’ve got a crew, I’m gonna put on a show like nobody’s ever seen. The biggest, flashiest, greatest show ever. Everybody will be screaming my name, recognize my face. I’ll shine so bright that they’ll have no choice but to love me. ” 

Buggy’s intensity made you smile, you couldn’t help it. Alcohol had created a cloudy burst of affection within you, or maybe it was just the floodgates of tension finally collapsing, letting out something that would have otherwise been smothered. Either way, it was as intoxicating as the drink itself. 

“Are you laughing at me?” Buggy asked, his tone filled with steel. You looked to see his dark expression, his narrowed eyes. 

“I’m not,” you said, confused by his rapid shift in demeanor. “I’m… I’m happy. I’ll do anything to help you.” 

He relaxed. “Well, you’d better start working on your act.” 

That made you laugh, a dizzy, bubbly sound. “I can’t do an act. I wouldn’t know what to do.” 

“There has to be something. Let me think… Can you sing?”

“I used to, a little. But not for a really long time.” 

“Come on, let me hear it.”

You were drunk, you knew that for a fact because in no state of sobriety would you offer to sing in front of another person. But, right then, bubbling with alcohol and protected by the darkness of the smoky night sky, you felt invincible. 

“Oh, what do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken sailor? What do you do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning? Slash his…um… something, something, captain’s daughter. Toss him in… to… the dirty water…” Whatever coherence you held onto unraveled into a fit of drunken laughter at the awful rhyme. “I’m sorry, I think… I think I forgot some of the words.”  

“Seems like you forgot the tune too,” Buggy said, wincing dramatically. All that did was make you laugh harder. “Hold on a second, let me wipe the blood out of my ears.” 

You swatted his shoulder, although your attempted indignance probably wasn’t very convincing when you were still smiling. “Don’t be mean!”

“That’s a bold way to treat your captain,” he told you, but he was smiling too. 

“Please don’t be mean to me, Captain Buggy,” you said, speaking slowly to emphasize how serious you were. 

“Beg me again.” 

You blinked. “What?” 

“Nothing,” he said, waving it off in a way that made you think he was making fun of you. “Anyway, I’m being nice right now, especially after that performance. The critics would eat you alive for that one. So, singing is out. Clearly. What else have you got?”

“Oh! I know a, um, a rhyme. A joke.” 

He looked at you skeptically. “Really?” 

“What is that s’posed to mean?” you asked.

“You don’t strike me as somebody with… How should I put this… A sense of humor?” 

You frowned. 

“Alright, alright, quit pouting and tell me,” Buggy said impatiently, waving you to continue. 

You cleared your throat very theatrically, sitting up as straight as you could manage. 

“There was a young lass who thought

Very little but thought it a lot.

Then at long last she knew

What she wanted to do,

But before she could start, she forgot.”

Deflating, you laughed, surprised at how clearly you had delivered the words. Especially considering how long it had been since you heard them. 

Buggy didn’t look nearly as impressed. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a clean limerick before,” he said. “And now I know why. I mean, what’s the point of limerick without the ick.”

You blew a raspberry at him. “Fine, you do one.”

“Okay, but you have to prepare yourself,” Buggy said. You nodded encouragingly.

“There was a young plumber named Lee

Who was plumbing his girl by the sea.

She said, ‘Stop your plumbing,

There's somebody coming’

Said the plumber, still plumbing, ‘It's me.’"

Belatedly, you gasped, your hands covering your mouth. That shock dissolved into giggles. “That’s, oh, that’s… that’s dirty.”

“Aw, was it too much for your delicate sensibilities? Now that you’re a pirate, you’re gonna hear a lot worse than that. A looooooooot worse. I hope your unspoiled ears can handle it.”  

“I can!” you insisted, taking a big drink to steel yourself before setting the bottle aside. If you were going to be a pirate, you had to stop getting so flustered. “More. Please.” 

“Okay, okay…” Buggy cleared his throat. “A hooker roaming the East Blue, 

Once filled her vagina with glue, 

She said, with a grin, ‘Well, they paid to get in, 

And they’ll damn sure pay to get out, too.’”

You laughed loudly, as much at the joke as the taboo nature of it. You laughed, and then giggled in a bubbly, drunken way that you knew was too loud and embarrassing. “That is icky,” you told him. “Jeez, that’s…” Your faux seriousness dissolved into a fit of giggles again and you leaned against him for stability. “What would you even do?” 

“Yeah, I don’t know. It sounds like a sticky situation,” he said, nudging you with his elbow. That, of course, sent you into another fit of giggles. 

“I’m sorry, I’m…” you said. “I think I’m drunk.” You looked behind yourself at the town, the glittery haze of joy buzzing in your head fading at the sight. It was horrific, wasn’t it? And here you were, laughing like a fool. You couldn’t really comprehend the magnitude of it all, even if you could acknowledge that it was terrible. “Is it okay?” you asked, looking back at him imploringly. “Everything that happened tonight… I thought I would feel very different after, but I don’t. It almost feels like it’s not even real. You ever get that? When things happen but they feel so impossible that you get confused?”

“If you can think that clearly,” Buggy said, “then you’re not drunk enough. Bottoms up, babydoll.” You smiled at his use of the pet name and the fluttery feeling it gave you. What else could you do but oblige, tipping the bottle back like before. Only, unlike before, you kept it all down. There wasn’t any real burn, just more sweetness, more warmth. 

And then there was nothing left. 

“Woah,” you said, lowering the empty bottle and wiping your mouth. “‘s all gone.”

“And how do you feel?” he asked. 

You opened your mouth to respond, but all that came out was a dizzy sort of laugh. “I dunno…” you said, closing your eye, trying to collect your thoughts. “I’m…” Already things were getting even more fuzzy and foggy. Fabric stuck to your flushed skin, the salty air drying across your chest and cheeks. “I feel… very…”

Making an upset noise in the back of your throat, you pushed your hair back, catching the bandana and pulling it off so you could feel the breeze on your whole face. That helped. Drawing in a deep breath, you looked at him, trying to focus. Only, the second you saw him, all you could do was smile. His eyes were greedy about the light, sparkling with it. Even with the nose, Buggy was handsome. That was not something you could tell him though, not at all ever. Unfortunately you had forgotten what you were saying in the first place. 

“Very… what?” Buggy asked. “‘Cause if you keep trying to be a buzzkill, I’ll give you something to laugh about.”

Were you a buzzkill? You couldn’t remember what you had said or done to earn that title. It was hard enough to comprehend what was happening in the moment. “Like what?” you asked.

“Like… this!” Buggy said, using the sash around your waist to pull you closer so he could tickle your sides. You jumped and squealed, the bottle rolling out of your hands as you tried to fight him off. 

“No no no, don’t,” you cried, trying to escape. You were being too loud, moving too much, acting like an idiot, but you didn’t have enough control to stop. 

“Why not?” he asked. “You’re laughing, aren’t you?” 

It was true, you couldn’t stop yourself from laughing, letting it out in panicked little bursts. Time had a bizarre elasticity to it, everything hitting you at once and fading just as fast. Laughing, sobbing, begging him to stop. It was easy to catch and hold onto one of his hands, but that left the other one free. And if you tried to catch that one instead, you had to release the first. There must have been a better way to do it, but you felt as if, bit by bit, particle by particle, the world was separating, the hot and humid air splitting, your limbs becoming loose, your capacity for rational thought dissipating like mist. 

Lacking any sort of control and with a completely undeserved sense of invulnerability, you tackled him. Buggy let it happen, still laughing. At least he had stopped. 

“God, it’s like being attacked by a drunk, one-eyed toddler,” he said. “What are you gonna do, whine me into submission?” 

“Don’t be mean,” you said seriously, your words ruined by something wavering between a laugh and a sob, or maybe it was just the drunken slur. 

“You attacked me. If anything, I'm the victim here.” 

“No! You started it!” 

“Hold on, are you… crying?” Buggy asked incredulously. “Aw, you poor thing. I mean, you were laughing so much, how could I have known you didn’t like it?” 

“I don’t!” you insisted. 

“To be clear,” he said. “You don’t like this?” He attacked your sides, not tickling so much as just teasing, but to the same effect. You yelped and sat up squirm away, swatting at his hands. 

Rather than laugh like before, Buggy groaned, his hips bucking up against you. A loud, harsh gasp left your mouth, your entire body going rigid from the liquid heat of friction, your thighs squeezing around him. At some point, your skirt had ridden up, your panties being the only barrier left. You didn’t think you had ever been as acutely aware of how achingly empty, electrically tingly, as you were right then. 

Bad. Very bad.

“Oh, there’s another fun noise,” Buggy said, laughing as he propped himself upright with his arms. “I can’t believe that got you.” 

“No,” you said quickly, dizzy from the intensity of your reaction and how close the two of you were. You could smell him, the sweat, the musk, the salt, the greasepaint, the gunpowder. You could see the glitter in his makeup, the fire catching in his eyes. “It jus’... surprised me.” 

“Is that why you’re shaking?” Buggy asked, rubbing your exposed thigh, the fabric of his glove catching the sensitive skin. 

“I’m… um…” Your eyebrows furrowed as you tried to organize the drunken slush of your brain. Being so close to him, feeling his body against yours, sent deviously tantalizing tingling sparks through you. And guilt. It was wrong, he wasn’t doing anything to invite those feelings, you were just being weird and drunk and embarrassing and you couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss him. You’d have to tilt your head a lot, although the stubble would be more hazardous than his nose. The last time you kissed someone, you were both young enough that you didn’t have to navigate facial hair. And then there was the matter of the makeup. You tried to imagine what you might look like after, the slash of red and imprint of white. Maybe they’d mix into pink. You tried to force yourself to focus on something else, but you couldn’t meet his eyes either. Nervous and confused and filled with a million different feelings you had no name for, you squirmed again, thoughtlessly adding to the anxious feedback loop of heat and need and intoxicated emptiness. 

“You know, sweetheart, this reminds me,” Buggy said, “there’s still the matter of your physical. It’s standard procedure for new crew. We could get that over and done with while you’re… lubricated.”

“What’re you… talking about?”  

“I’ve gotta make sure you’re fit, healthy… Clean of anything you could pass on to the forty or so people you’re gonna be stuck with in an enclosed space for weeks at a time.”

“How d’you do that?” 

“You’ve been to a doctor, right? It’s kinda like that. I know it can feel a little invasive, so it might be better to do it while you’re drunk.”

“What…” you started to ask, but then Buggy shifted, his hips pushing up against you. The fresh wash of warmth it sent into your core scattered your mind, and you lost the already tenuous thread of thought. Your eyelashes fluttered, although you weren’t sure when you had closed your eye. “Umm…”

“Well, first,” he said, answering the question you hadn’t asked, “you’d have to take off your clothes. Then relax while I have a little look-see. It’s important that you stay as still as possible. I’ll have a hard time finishing if you can’t stop squirming around the whole time.” 

“Do you really have to?” you asked, your brow furrowing. It sounded embarrassing. But maybe if it was him, you didn’t mind? Your dad did all of your past medical check-ups so it wasn’t inherently wrong. But the thought of Buggy seeing you without clothes wasn’t exactly nice, you could only imagine his disgust. That was bad. 

“Depends on if you’re serious about being a pirate or not,” Buggy said.   

“I am serious!” you exclaimed. Your hands went to the sash around your waist to pull the bow free. If you did it quickly, you wouldn’t be as embarrassed. 

“Woah, wait. Holy shit,” Buggy said, “are you seriously—” He cracked up laughing, making you freeze. “I didn’t think you’d actually fall for that.”

“You’re… laughing,” you said, your fingers falling with the slow sink of humiliation. 

“You really were going to strip for me, out in the open and everything.” Buggy laughed harder, rocking forward. “I didn’t expect you to be so eager. Hey, if you really wanna get naked, I’m not going to stop you.” 

“I don’t, I just… I thought…” you said, pulling away from him and trying to get onto your feet to get away, embarrassment lighting the worst sort of fire within you.  

“Woah, calm down, it was just a joke,” Buggy said, his laughter fading. “You’re absolutely plastered, if you stand up, you’re gonna fall right back down.” You didn’t stop, resolute to get onto your feet and put some distance between you and him. “I won’t catch you.” 

“’m fine,” you told him. 

You finally got your footing and braced against your knee to lurch upright. For a second, you were standing up and weightless. And then you were nothing.

#opla buggy #opla buggy x reader #opla x reader #buggy x reader #my writing #one piece live action #buggy the clown #buggy the genius jester #buggy the flashy fool #lmao all of those come up when you type buggy that's cute #flashbang

[skelingtonsderek]

This idea that there is some cookie cutter perfect answer to taking care of yourself is so fucking harmful. In like a lot of ways but this is the one I've been thinking about recently on account of my recent season of sleeplessness.

Sleep! Rest! Voluntarily obtaining a state of unconsciousness in order to hallucinate vividly! 8 hours of sleep! You need! 8 hours! If you don't get! 8! You are! Failing!

But like, at best that's an average and we all know the statistical incompatibilities with accuracy and averages....

So sleepers georg needs 10 hours a day to feel rested cause he's just wired like that and I, most ardent enemy of sleep that I am, feel like shit if I get more than 6. My partner sleeps like a log the whole night through for like ninety thousand years fully unconscious immovable object. I can do about 2 hours at a time without needing to get up and move around a bit.

And that's when I'm not in a season of sleeplessness where I sometimes don't sleep at all at night or maybe only manage a 90 minute stillness.

The thing is I didn't come up with the term season of sleeplessness on my own. My whole family is like this. Or at least enough of them are that it never seemed strange to me for a household to be up at all hours. "Bed time" meant "when you need to be in your room being quiet" not "time to sleep."

But now I'm older and I thought I'd try because the doctors talk about how bad for your health it is! You! Need! Sleep! Insomnia is bad! Evil for no sleeping!

Well I tried. I did. For several years just to make sure it wasn't me. And it's been the mooost tiring and frustrating experience of my life! The more I consistently managed to do what they told me sleep-wise the more symptoms I had that are usually reserved for the insomnia list. I felt like shit. I got sick more. I started getting tired throughout the day. More headaches. Harder time concentrating. Worse time managing my social life. My work tanked. It's been fucking hell. Especially when a season of sleeplessness would hit and I'd find myself trapped in bed because if I got up I was a Bad Insomniac who didn't really want to be better and just-- I had lost all of my reserves for managing periods of severe insomnia because I had pivoted all that shit into the exhausting task of forcing myself to sleep.

It's sucked. It's sucked so fucking hard. I've never been so tired and miserable in my life. I know that doesn't sound like much but I am a chronic insomniac from a family of insomniacs. Our first name is Difficulty Falling Asleep, Our middle name is Difficulty Staying Asleep and our last name is FuckingChristWhyCan'tIGetBackToSleepIt's4AM.

There's a lot of bullshit out there about how to sleep and who's doing it right and how you're doing it wrong but like. We're all fucking weird. Strange little creatures moving about the skin of existence with just enough sense to look around us in shock and wonder. How the hell does anyone know how much sleep I or anyone else needs? How do you look at a group of little insects and say they all need the same exact things? We don't and we can't and it's GOOD that we aren't all exact little copies of each other.

Every singular one of us is different with different needs and different wants and different tastes and yeah, there are some general guidelines of things you should probably keep in mind like maybe try to make choices based on care for yourself and not obligation. Or like. Be kind to yourself. also others I guess but in my experience we are all far more unkind to ourselves than we could ever have opportunity to be to others.

#unhinged monster journals publicly #insomnia

[vizthedatum]

One of the college admission essays I wrote in 2007... or "how I downplayed the amount of trauma I was going through and masked so fucking hard to get into college"

The inhabitants of this Earth revolve themselves around certain procedures, schedules, and mannerisms that are unique to them, but are they so unique? Perhaps, we simply mimic or take inspiration from other lives, add our own personal touch, and call them our own, but a certain consistency is apparent in everyone's routine. In my case, I'm not so fortunate.

On an average day, I wake up at 5:50 AM, bang my head on the wall adjacent to the closet, and get ready for the long day in front of me. During the school year, I diligently attend school with a few minor complaints and learn how and what to study for the betterment of my education. While I involve myself in school and the work that pertains to it, I look for outlets that will help distract me from my schoolwork. These outlets are my extracurricular activities. I've been involved in orchestral work, which concerns my violin playing, academic teams (such as math team, future problem solving, and quiz bowl to name a few), and volunteering. This is simply an overview of my daily schedule, while quite frankly, this average day is not quite accurate.

As I began my freshman year of high school, I found that my "average day" was slowly changing. Though I kept up with my schoolwork and activities, I constantly felt deprived of energy. At least once a week, I would get an almost unbearable migraine and would have to lie down until it got better. The only reason why I survived my first term of high school was because I only had 2 academic subjects, Math and French. That term I was involved in the Pitt orchestra for our fall school musical, Oklahoma. Practices would run up to 6:00 each day, and after my mom picked me up and dropped me off home, I'd collapse on our living room couch for 2-3 hours.

Freshman year wasn't so bad though, because I'd try and keep my headaches under control as well as trying to keep myself healthy so that I could function. When sophomore year began, I had a fail-proof plan to succeed in school as well as taking the necessary rest I needed to keep focused. Everything drastically changed when on September 19th, 2005, my father suffered an almost fatal stroke. For a week, he was in a coma. I also remember that the Friday of that particular week, I had an AP European History test. I didn't study. North Memorial Hospital became my second home. I would go there after school every day and sometimes, stay overnight. For months and even today, I couldn't sleep at night. I did my homework during class and in passing time. Not only had everything gone out of control but my mind had as well. My grades got worse than usual, and I didn't care what happened around me. Nevertheless, I tried to make it to school every day even though my work output was of low quality. My father stayed in stroke rehabilitation for the rest of the 2005 year before finally being discharged from the hospital. Even though, he was discharged, he was half paralyzed, and his speech was severely impaired. Three times a week, he would go to the hospital for therapy, and most times, I would come too. During that year, I felt really empty and alone. I felt that my dad was going to drop dead and I would never see him again. I felt like I would collapse into tears every few minutes, and I did so a few times in the school stairwell. Then again, I felt guilty for feeling alone and helpless. My friends surrounded me with a protective coat of support, and my aunt and uncle helped us resettle into our new lives. Furthermore, my mother and my brother needed me. While I managed to go to school every day, my brother couldn't as my mother took him with her to take care of my father.

As if it weren't hard enough, when my father became sick, he lost his job. We were a family of four who depended on a sole financial provider, my father. We also lived in an apartment for which we had to pay a monthly rent. We then had to live off of Social Security, which was not so sufficient for the room and board of our whole family plus gas bills. It was very difficult especially since I tried to continue all of the activities I was involved in at school.

My father resumed going to work in the summer of 2006, but he mostly worked from home. When I started 11th grade, things were somewhat better. Whatever happened in the past was horrific to think about, and every day I would be reminded of it. My headaches also started getting worse. Second term of 11th grade was especially hard for me, because it seemed like I acquired every flu/cold in existence. Third term was even harder because I began experiencing sharp pains in my lower left abdomen. It turned out I had an enlarged ovarian cyst. For months after that, I experienced the same pain for unknown reasons. My headaches became migraines, and I found my body limiting my actions such as going to school. I was determined to not let that bring me down. My grades did suffer a little bit, but I took the responsibility to teach myself the subjects I signed up to take.

The summer before my senior year was a happy time for me. My migraines were getting worse, but I was getting treated for it. Though I wasn't getting any relief and felt guilty because of the waste of money all this was turning out to be, I spent my summer making myself happy with who I was. I hung out with my friends, happily taught swimming, and volunteered as much as I could.

Senior year started, and quite frankly, I was really excited. I was signed up for really great classes with teachers that I knew and trusted. The not so exciting part was that I didn't even get to fully enjoy it; I missed more than half of the first term. Every week, my mom rushes me to doctor after doctor to find an absolute cure so I can go back to my life. I recently got put on two new medications, and I hope they'll help. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep on keeping my commitments to school (even if I don't always attend), learning, and the activities that make me happy and build my character.

--

So many things I didn't say:

my ongoing suicidality and depression

the physical and mental abuse from my parents

the physical and mental abuse from my high school boyfriend

everyone disbelieving my pain

the abuse from my doctors

my PCOS, undiagnosed endometriosis, undiagnosed bladder pain

the absolute brutality of what it takes to get into college when you're poor

my undiagnosed anxiety disorder and PTSD

#college essay #i was only seventeen #harm #abuse #high school #college admissions #migraines #pain #doctors #doctor #prose #essay

[whythewords]

Days 267 - 280: What it might be...

Quicker turnaround than many of the last posts (yes I'm mentioning it again) and with perhaps an odd (or possibly perfect) juxtaposition with the sad yet hopeful nature of the end of that last entry.

I'll start by saying things have been pretty good. Aside from an incredibly annoying but relatively infrequent lingering cough, the COVID symptoms seem to be a distant memory. Two negative tests and I was back on campus. It was a busy week, but I got the shit done that I needed to do and then quickly realized today, as the school week has come to a close that we're about to enter week 6. That means I'm just a couple of weeks away from reading week which is not only a nice little break to look forward to, but the halfway point of the semester... My final semester...is almost halfway done. Holy fuck. The coming workload seems daunting but it seems doable and I am inching closer to the finish line that, when I started this journey, seemed barely even visible on the horizon.

It's a good feeling.

You know what's a bad feeling though? The massive, unrelenting headache I got this past Wednesday night.

You know what's ANOTHER GOOD feeling though? Getting a 'like' on one of the dating apps (yes, I went back) from a girl who actually seems kinda cool on her profile and that I actually seem to have (at least at first glance) a mental and physical attraction to. But I've played this game before. And it ain't the first time. Hell, it's one of the reasons I keep suspending the apps off and on in the first place. There's a connection, there's the beginning of a conversation, and then there's nothing. It's played out exactly that way several times since first getting back on the horse after my the separation. Why would this be any different?

Couple this with the fact that it was the very day I had this unrelenting headache. I came home from class gung-ho to get a head start on some labs that were due in a few days, but just collapsed into my bed and begged the universe to let me sleep off whatever demon boa constrictor had wrapped around my brain.

I saw the 'like,' I looked at the profile. The boa constrictor loosened its grip on my brain long enough for me to have some passing thoughts on the situation: "She's cute. She seems cool. Also, I'm dying. This shit seldom works out anyway so I'll respond to her later."

A few minutes go by and I remember that podcasts help put me to sleep sometimes. I grab the phone to load one up. A message. y brain pipes up again: "Shit. Okay. Well it's weird if I confirm the match and then say nothing, so I'll confirm the match tomorrow morn-oh shit never mind I just did it by accident." That fucking demon constrictor strikes again.

I respond. We chat. The conversation goes on much longer than any I've had on the apps since the first time I dove back into them post-separation (but that's not saying much). But the conversation was nice and it distracted me from my headache. She was present and she was funny and was engaged in the conversation, moreso than anyone else I had talked to on these apps in a long time, maybe ever. The conversation went on for a bit over an hour and then drifted to food in our respective locales. I took the opportunity to ask her out next weekend. She said yes.

What the fuck just happened?

Did I actually fall asleep while trying so desperately to get rid of this headache only for my mind to play a sick prank on me? Nope. This is just...a thing that's happening.

I'd gotten back onto the apps around mid-August, not too long after my August 14 entry here where I briefly talked about the idea of going back. At first I just had them there on the phone and didn't really use them, just waited to see if an occasional match would spring up that would catch my eye. It was infrequent. And when it did happen, it wasn't anything I was particularly interested in. As the weeks rolled on I started swiping a bit and trying to throw out the occasional 'like' or message on the apps that allowed such interaction. The results didn't change much. The occasional promising match, the exchange of a handful of messages, then silence.

These last couple weeks I was coming in hot. "I'm gonna try it" I told myself. "I'm gonna use up all the likes, and the swipes and send as many messages as I can and just do one last blitz. If it doesn't work out I'll jump back off the apps, at least until school is over." There were a precious few more matches than before, but the results were pretty much the same. Here I am, not even fully sure I know what I'm looking for or why I'm looking now, and then...Wednesday happens.

It was only two days ago, but we've been chatting a whole bunch since. And I've been in a good mood these last couple of days. But herein lies the caveat (because of course there is one): this COULD be nothing. The biggest mistake I made when I was first doing this online dating thing (several years ago when I was broken up with my eventual ex-wife for the first time) was getting too invested. There were at least a couple of times when I found myself anxious and excited for a date, only for the date to transpire and for the person to conclude that they weren't interested in me, or for me to conclude the same about them.

I have to prepare myself for that. I have to let myself know that this is a trial. I'm trying it out and hoping it works. And it might not. I haven't even met this person yet for god's sake. But the key here is finding a line. Striking a balance. Know what this is Joe. Know that it is fleeting. Know that it is as likely to disappoint as it is to go well. But enjoy it anyway. And I am. I'm enjoying it. I guess that's kinda the point of this shit right? I thought about it earlier today in the sense that if this doesn't work out, at least I'll have had this strange, fleeting high for the couple of weeks leading up to the date. I impressed a stranger. I was charming in some way. I'm capable of being interesting or attractive to someone. I dunno. It feels nice. The feeling might not last. But I guess it's okay to hope it does? I've been in this same situation a few times before and I've hit the same damn adage every time. PREPARE for the worst.

But fucking....just...hope for the best.

Right?

#life of joe #not so daily journal #online dating

[papercherries]

I try to refrain from writing full pieces on my phone but I don't think I can bare to turn on my computer and look at all my tabs. It's too much to think about. I think the touchscreen keyboard removes a sense of physicality from my writing. The actuation of the keys is a cathartic experience for me and helps me feel physically connected with the things I write.

I'm not depressed, at least not at the moment. I'm not happy either. I don't want to sleep but I am tired. I feel like there's a hole in my chest. Shot straight through. My chest is tight and my throat is raspy. I am ill but I feel fine. I keep thinking, I wish I existed. I know I exist, these words are proof of that. Sure it could all be a simulation of some kind but that doesn't take away from the fact I exist, even as a line of code or a jolt between synapses.

I think it's because I felt today wasn't very productive. However I have had less productive days. I went to the shops to get bread and carrots (not for the same meal), I finished a game I had been playing, I received a reply from a message I'd sent to an actor. But I think the real issue comes from one of my daily activities.

Everyday for around 1-6 hours, I'll play guitar. I mean that very loosely, whether I'm just playing with chords or playing short instrumentals I know off by heart. At minimum, an hour of that time is spent singing as well. It's how I release a lot of energy and emotions. If I'm sad I'll usually play sad songs (not exclusively mind you), if I'm frustrated or angry ill play heavier songs (though 90% of the time they're played with bare acoustic with no amp because I don't wanna annoy my flatmates anymore than i do). If I'm happy I'll just play whatever I feel like.

It's extremely rare that I am ill (not including hangovers and physical injuries from violence), usually it doesn't affect me too badly either. I'll have small headaches and my shoulders tend to hurt but besides that I look fine. However, sometimes my throat will dry up. Usually it's not too bad either, sometimes happens after shows and such. Just a mixture of illness and concert screaming. But very rarely will I not be able to sing afterwards. Mind you, I'm still able to sing songs that don't require that part of my throat. Though it's difficult I can play around it. Though recently I've been playing heavier songs and testing with more shouting and heavier vocals. I find it incredibly fun though I imagine my neighbours don't. It's also great for letting off lots of energy I tend to build up, I always have pent up energy so it's always nice to get it out.

I dare say I'm quite good at singing as well, though you may not be able to tell from my practice as I tend to try to push myself and experiment and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If I had to curate something though, it probably would be a ok show. Though my stage fright is quite bad, though I can shake it off. My guitar is probably much less commendable but I haven't been doing that one my whole life so it's fair. Plus I'm completely self taught, though I have reached a point where I feel I just need to get physically better before I continue learning more mentally. Once I can play barre for 10 minutes straight I'll feel happier. Got weak little hands.

My point being, I couldn't do that today. I did some songs that had that more heavier feel, I even leaned into the sickly, rough feel with some bright eyes songs I knew would fit it. But I was really in a screaming and shouting mood, it just wasn't possible. I can't even talk in my normal voice, I'm like an octave lower than I usually am. So I've been singing a lot lower than usual today, a lot calmer as well. I probably shouldn't sing at all but I don't think that's possible. I'm the type to pipe, I'll sing to myself at every given moment of silence. For kitchen tasks, I find country songs are the ones that usually show up. Hallelujah comes up a lot in general (Leonard Cohen). When I'm cleaning, lots of indie songs. Sometimes I even have my own songs. I made a lovely little song that has a repeating chorus that is probably the catchiest thing I've ever conceived. Not being able to do that consistently as well has been awful.

Other small things it has affected. Me and my housemate are like blind cats. We meow to alert one another of our presence. If they don't meow back then they're not in their room. I mean I think we just do it out of habit but I need to give a real reason. I can't make a realistic meow. That pitch is completely locked off from me right now. I also can't make funny sounds! I can't say yipee! In a high pitched voice. I can't do a muscle man impression. The best I can do is a rough aussie accent where nobody else gets what I'm referencing. This is peak comedy my friends are missing out on. They're gonna love it when I rewatch big lez.

I hate being without the full potential of my voice. It's driving me up the fucking wall. I need it to fix itself within 3 days or I am fucked. I've got a concert and it's gonna be shouting and screaming and moshing and jumping. I need my voice. Throat soothers, whiskey and ice cream. Though I can't afford any of those so I'll just have to steal the throat soothers and ice cream.

Anyway rant over, this one will be interesting to explain at therapy.

#creative writing #spilled thoughts #writing

[dzpenumbra]

6/1/23

I think I can safely say that today sucked. I was woken up 1 hour after I fell asleep to a phone call from a family friend. The dude lives probably 20-30 minutes away and has a history in art. We were last supposed to link up... I think in February or March? And I told him then that afternoons and evenings work for me. Like... I always make a point to specify that.

So, I woke up and immediately rolled over and went back to sleep, then woke up to another call 2 hours later. I listened to the original voicemail. He was heading through my city and... wanted to see if I wanted to go with him? To another town upstate? And didn't even tell me what he was doing there... And he called at 8AM, with no advanced notice. And I barely know the guy.

Engaging the voicemail with my brain made me fully awake, yet exhausted. That horrible feeling. I put the box fan on and... still couldn't get back to sleep for at least another hour. I took the opportunity to finish the Amazon order. Fuck it, right?

Eventually, I got up. I ate some food, that usually helps me fall asleep. Then I went to the comfy chair and got myself to pass out for another hour and a half. And... I've been up since then.

I even did yoga, and a small workout. I got a pizza delivered so I didn't have to worry about food. But... I never made coffee all day. My whole rhythm was thrown off all day. And it's been pretty hot all day too.

So I've been enduring most of the day with this nasty headache, and I've been really hot, and even a little nauseous for bits of it. It's been really rough.

I can't keep living like this. I swear, it's just one little thing and it just --- ugh. I don't even feel like catastrophizing. I don't even have the energy.

It's early (for me). It's 1:45. I've been nodding off for the past 4+ hours. Now, I'm gonna make sure I get to bed at a somewhat decent time. And I'm going to pray that I can actually sleep in the heat. Apparently it's supposed to get into the 90's tomorrow.

I did the test beads too. Not the spray part though, but I finished designing them and Mod Podge'd two of them. The other two I'm just going to spray without Mod Podge just to see the difference.

So yeah, the rest of the thoughts I have rattling around in my head are just... catastrophizing and lamenting, and... again... I just don't have the energy for that. I just wanted to say, because it's been in my head all day... that I feel bad for flaking and not texting that family friend back. It's just a text, I could've done that at any point today and I just flaked. I feel bad. I don't need to, it's not the end of the world and I'll likely text him tomorrow, but like... I've been doing that more and more lately, not responding... because I just get distracted or sucked into something, or just flat-out forget, then hours go by and I remember and by that point... it's awkwardly late. I've never really had a problem with this my entire life until the last couple years, in fact... I was always really good at reliably getting back to people and responding. Just something I noticed. I'm going to do tarot and then water my plants and head to bed.

Past - Ace of Swords, inverted (Intellect, apply logic and reason, Clarity and focus of mind.) Present - XVI: The Tower (Drastic transformation, unforeseen change, paradigm shifts.) Future - XIII: Death (Life-altering transformation, sudden natural change.)

Wow. I was not expecting something this heavy tonight. I guess we'll see what to make of this. Two cards back to back that make my heart do that tight spasm thing. Fun.

Let's start on a... naw, its not a good note. The source here is something interfering with my clarity, my ability to deal with logic and reason. Sound familiar, fellow anxiety disorder victims? It could be other things too, but that's where my intuition is bringing me tonight so... let's explore. That thread is connected to a card that I never like seeing. The Tower. The Tower means... okay... say your current life, your personality, your routine, the things you know and love... they're all bricks in a tower that you are building to keep you safe from the chaos and unpredictability of the world. The Tower is the sudden unexpected lightning bolt that strikes that Tower, throws you from the parapet and sends the whole thing crumbling to the ground. And what this catastrophe leads to... is Death. Death gets a bad name, of course. Why wouldn't it. It's fucking Death. However... Death in this context is about... a natural conclusion. I had to do some research on it because The Tower and Death are actually really similar cards. The closest I can tell is that... The Tower is more... unforeseen? More out-of-the-blue. And Death is... a natural conclusion to a chapter. Not necessarily "the end" in totality, but a natural, inevitable conclusion. That's what I got from it, at least.

What this means for me? I'm not sure, honestly. And, if you've been following these readings, I've had a pretty healthy ability to intuit my way through this... but... I honestly think my anxiety and a latent fear that fate might actually be real... they might be causing me to draw a self-protective blank. What life structure is being shattered? The staying up until 7AM crap? The nocturnal thing? I mean, I barely have any structure at all. Which is why I dread The Tower so much. If you have a schedule, a family, a job, a routine, all of those things concurrently... if you lose one of them... I mean, it fucking hurts, don't get me wrong... but like... you still have the others. If you have schedule, job, routine, but lose family? You still have the other 3. So... I've already lost my family... I barely have a routine other than yoga at the start of my day and this at the end, and making sure I do something productive in between, and try to do my one meal that I call "dinner" before too late. I don't have a schedule at all, really. So... the only thing left is... my job. And that one... I really don't want to get back into that.

So... I'm kinda hoping that... given the surrounding circumstances of today... that The Tower is my sleep schedule change. And maybe weaning off of RP streams. Maybe getting away from RP in general, other than as a tool for me to socialize. And maybe that's where the Death comes in? The inevitable conclusion that I'm going to have to walk away from?

I feel like I'm missing a piece. I feel like I just skipped right over the start. Maybe I don't really understand the Ace of Swords as well as I thought, let me look at it. Because the other two make a lot of sense to me, and seem to be echoing a very clear message of an imminent dramatic life change, but I just... don't really understand what about. Maybe... it's exactly that. Maybe the problem is a lack of clarity and vision.

I don't know, maybe I just need time to reflect on this. This was pretty heavy. It makes the past few nights feel like training wheels or something.

Agh, what am I not seeing clearly! It's nagging me. When I get big things like this... my puzzle-solving brain comes out and feels like some kind of time-travel movie where the protagonist has a very important but cryptic clue and they have to figure out what it means so they save the world or some shit.

Look... My world got flipped upside down like... 3 or 4 times over the course of the last 365 solar cycles. What's one more, eh? XD What's one fucking more.

Well okay, lets try to do breadcrumbs then. So... if The Tower is the Present, it means... it's happening right now. And there was a giant paradigm shift that fucked me up today. My family's intervention into my life, through a family friend that was almost guaranteed to be urged on to contact me by my mom. This fucked up my sleep severely, which has had me feeling like garbage and could take me days to recover from. That's sudden, it's unexpected and out of the blue, and it made a dramatic impact. So... if that is The Tower... then... how the fuck does the inverted Ace of Swords connect to that? A blind spot? An impairment or inability to use reason? What, because I wasn't prepared for it? I mean... I was fucking asleep. I don't know. Maybe because I was too anxious to follow up with this guy, because my last interaction with him was talking about how it was tough for me to leave my cat alone because she was very sick... like a week before she died... I don't know. Even that seems shaky. And then how does this phone-call fucking up my sleep... turn into Death? It could be Death of the staying up until dawn shit. It could be Death of going to bed when it's light out, and bitching about the neighbors making noise at 10 AM. I mean... it can be that. If I choose. If I can make it work.

Yeah, that's the best I've got tonight. I really didn't wanna do anything taxing tonight and then... this happened.... XD Oh well. I gotta go pass out.

[lepusrufus]

Double edged scalpel ch. 7

Ch.1 ch.2 ch.3 ch.4 ch.5 ch.6

Summary: in which Cassandra gets bullied and other sappy shenanigans

---

"Oh Nicole dear, so happy to see you again!" Duke's voice was cheerful as ever, tone masterfully crafted over years of being a businessman.

Nicole, taking small steps inside the ornate and now full of items room, greeted him with uncharacteristic giddiness.

"Duke! How's business?"

"Same as always, I'll be heading to Beneviento later tonight to deliver some tools for her," he took a long drag of his cigar and, noticing green eyes scanning over multiple items and said, "I also have your order."

With a childish grin on her face, she approached him, hands shuffling inside the small bag attached to her belt that all staff members had. She pulled out the money owed for her package and, in return, the Duke placed a decently sized box in her arms. With an oof she shifted it in a less precarious position, it's heavy contents seeming to plot against her small frame.

"Unfortunately I can't stay, duty calls. But thank you Duke."

"No worries, I do understand that your employers can be quite," he took another drag of his cigar, looking for the right word. "...demanding"

Nicole chuckled. That was one way to put it.

"Well until next time dear. Or if you find yourself in need of something else, I'll be here until six."

---

She was only wearing a long white towel when she heard a knock on the door. Assuming it was another maid, or even Anita inquiring about whether or not she'd be joining the rest of them for dinner, she opened the door just a crack.

It was a surprise to see none other than Cassandra standing there, her elegant frame in odd contrast with the modest corridor. She flung the door open, letting the brunette inside and took a quick glance down the hall, making sure no maid was on the floor after fainting due to fright.

"What are you doing here?"

"Aw, are you not happy to see me?" She was pouting, but her tone was joking.

Nicole rolled her eyes, but the small smile on her lips betrayed that she was indeed happy to see her. Cassandra only laughed instead, a beautiful melodious laugh, so unlike the dark cackles heard by prisoners down in the dungeons.

"Just sit down, I need to get dressed," Nicole pointed to the bed before moving to the small dresser and pulling out a clean uniform.

Cassandra went to sit on the slightly disheveled bed, eyes following the redhead's form as she let the towel drop to her feet and started to put on the various layers of her uniform. Then golden eyes darted to the box sitting on the bed. The tape sealing it had been cut not long after Nicole brought it back to her room to make sure all its contents made it safely. Not that she didn't trust the Duke, but postal service was postal service.

"What's this?" Cassandra inquired, trying to read the label but having no success as it had been scribbled over with a marker.

Nicole stilled for a moment, hands frozen on her white button up. She cleared her throat and shyly admitted:

"Actually that's for you. Do open it if you want."

Cassandra's eyes widened, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks. The gesture had really caught her off guard. She gingerly lifted the lid, inspecting it's contents for a moment and then hummed.

"And here I was thinking you like my hair. With how much you love to pull on it and all that."

Nicole, now fully clothed and sporting a deep blush, marched to her and plucked the two boxes of red hair dye from gloved hands. She placed them on her nightstand and, with her voice just slightly more high pitched, she turned to the brunette.

"Those are mine, I meant the rest of it." And, after a chuckle, "I mean have you seen my roots? They're horrible!"

Cassandra only gave her a deadpan look and, after a long moment, said: "I think your hair is beautiful."

She didn't wait for a reply, not that it would be anything more than a stammered mumble of course. Instead she chuckled and returned her attention to the box. She examined the rest of its contents and then gingerly lifted one of the few tomes inside. The cover was glossy and malleable, it's pages shiny and with a distinct typography smell to it. It was so unlike her other books, it's pristine white state making it feel extremely out of place in the castle. She glanced at Nicole inquisitively.

"I do appreciate the gift, don't misunderstand me, but surely you know there's a small bookshop's worth of medical books in this castle."

"With all due respect, from what I've seen most of them are at least somewhat outdated. Interesting, yes, but I thought you'd like to learn something more...modern." Then she pulled out another book. "This is the same one I used while studying forensic pathology. It would make teaching you some things easier. Uh… assuming you want that."

Nicole averted her gaze, suddenly unsure of the usefulness of her gift. Cassandra however grabbed her chin between two fingers and pulled her gaze back on her. She smiled, finding the shy demeanor beyond endearing.

"I'd love that."

A small smile appeared on thin lips and Nicole leaned in to kiss Cassandra. It was soft and short, but no less intimate than the deep kisses they shared so many times in Cassandra's bed.

They had to go anyway.

---

Let's go to the library, Cassandra said. It'll be empty, she said.

When Cassandra swung open the intricate door, only to find the other two sisters lounging on one of the couches, it's not like they could do a one eighty and leave the room. That would've been both impolite and highly suspicious.

Instead, Cassandra grabbed her arm protectively and led them to the reading spot farthest from the other two. They placed one of the textbooks on the small desk and Cassandra took out a notebook. This would've been a lot more fruitful with an actual body on hand, but there were still a couple days until the human flesh supply had to be replenished and Cassandra was beyond eager to start on some things. So, for now, they had to settle for theory alone.

It took all of five minutes for the other two sisters to make their way to their desk. Daniela had a giddy yet curious expression on her face, while Bela seemed as unreadable as ever, if not for a glint in her eyes that betrayed her interest.

"Whatcha dooooing?" Came Daniela's voice, who cocked her head not unlike a curious puppy would while looking at the book's contents.

"Working," Cassandra replied, a slight growl accompanying her words.

"Could've fooled me," Bela spoke from behind the youngest sister, eyeing the hand protectively placed on Nicole's waist.

Cassandra snapped her eyes at the blonde, looking ready to throw her notebook at her head but Bela ignored her sister's ire and addressed Nicole instead.

"What are you studying?"

"I uh- just some basic anatomy concepts. Thought it would be a good idea to start with the things that the older books in the castle don't cover."

Bela only hummed, grabbed an ornate chair nearby, and plopped herself at the desk, opposite from the pair. Daniela mimicked her sister, but instead chose to sit down right by Nicole on the small couch. It took more willpower than she would admit not to glue herself to Cassandra's side when Daniela's face came uncomfortably close so she could look over the book's diagrams. She stood still as a statue though. After a couple seconds of silence and Nicole trying to figure out what she was supposed to do, Daniela drew her head back, looking at her with what was possibly the most serious expression she had seen on the youngest sister.

"You do realize we're not going to hurt you right? How could we lay a finger on our dear sister's lover hmm?"

Nicole's breath caught in her throat. She wasn't sure if it was due to the word used to describe her or how Daniela apparently knew that she was utterly terrified of her. Cassandra sighed beside her and, seeming to at least partially read Nicole's thoughts, clarified:

"Your heartbeat."

Oh. Yeah. Yeah her heart was beating a million miles an hour. And apparently the other three vampiric occupants of the room were able to hear it loud and clear. It did very little to ease her mind.

"Please do calm down, it feels like someone is having drumming lessons. Bad ones," Bela complained, head resting in one of her hands like she was already bored.

"Then shove a sock in your ears," Cassandra snapped.

Bela simply leaned back in her seat and stretched her arms above her head. "And risk not hearing my beloved sisters sing along to some pop song?"

Cassandra shut her mouth, a blush now slowly spreading across her cheeks while Daniela burst out into laughter. Even Nicole couldn't help betraying the brunette and letting out a giggle.

"I didn't know you could sing."

"I can't."

"Au contraire dear Cassie! Should I remind you of the last time Dragostea din tei came on the radio? The pathos!" Daniela reached over Nicole's lap to lightly shake her sister's knee through her giggles.

Cassandra only let out a long groan, face now hidden in her palms. "I hate you both."

"Mhm, we love you too," came Bela's reply, accompanied by a chuckle.

Nicole couldn't keep a small laugh while she snaked her arm behind the brunette to show some form of support against the merciless assailants. Maybe not a complete betrayal.

The scene really had something deep within her heart aching beautifully. It reminded her of the countless times she and Alex would mercilessly tease each other, but still have each other's backs through thick and thin. And for this familiarity to come from people that any sane person would consider bloodthirsty monsters? Hell, maybe they should start considering her a monster too, for the only word she could use to describe them in that moment was endearing.

"So," Bela lightly clapped her gloved hands. "Now that your pulse isn't giving me a headache anymore, what are we doing?"

She had a confident smirk on her face, but her eyes betrayed curiosity. Same for Daniela and, although mixed with a hint of annoyance, Cassandra. She opened the book in front of her, one of general human anatomy, and decided that the digestive system would be a good enough starting point.

---

Their little impromptu lesson didn't last more than two hours. Two hours that proved to Nicole just how oddly human all three sisters can be. Of course she had gotten familiar with Cassandra, intimately so, but the other two still felt like two looming monsters hiding in the shadows. At least up until now.

Bela seemed oddly intrigued by Nicole's explanation, although unlike Cassandra, she seemed to view it more like a story than anything. Daniela seemed slightly more interested, asking questions here and there and even starting to giggle like a middle schooler when they got to the rectum section. That got an eye roll from the other two. Nicole just laughed, finally understanding Mrs Hawkins, her private biology teacher from before she was allowed to step foot in any public school.

After they were done, Bela simply stood up and bid them good night. Danila instead excitedly proposed the skeletal system for next time and picked up the books she abandoned earlier. Then, with a small tower of tomes she went through a door tucked at the very back of the room. Her study, Cassandra had pointed out as they made their way out of the library.

"I didn't know your sisters were interested in medicine too." Nicole kept her voice low, almost as if talking too loudly would disturb the shadowy hallways.

"More or less. Daniela likes it and has a bit of hands-on practice but she has her nose in romance novels more often than not. Bela finds it interesting but botany is what she really loves. That and classic lit." She added the last part with a grimace and Nicole had to wonder which author had offended her personally.

Before she could continue that train of thought though, her gaze moved to the windows, the cloudless sky beyond thick glass panels full of twinkling stars. Her mind kept going back to a few hours earlier and at what Daniela had said. Lover. Did Cassandra truly see her as one or was the youngest sister just being her over the top self. Did she see Cassandra this way? Nicole had not allowed herself to dwell on that up until now, the idea that the brunette saw her as more than an over glorified lab partner with whom she occasionally scratched an itch seemed almost laughable. But the small gestures of affection shown in ways Cassandra seemed to know best were undeniably there. And the familiar flutter in her chest at each of said gestures was also undeniably there.

"What's wrong?"

Cassandra's voice, accompanied by the slight echo through the empty hallway, snapped Nicole out of her thoughts.

"Oh um- nothing." She sounded as convincing as someone trying to sell you a fork while showing you a spoon.

And Cassandra didn't seem to buy it. She moved in front of the redhead, walking backwards with no concern over possible furniture to collide into along the way.

"You always get this… face when something's bothering you."

"I do not-" the indignation in her tone was weak, little more than an attempt to change the subject.

"Mhmm you do. You normally look focused. Kind of like, if someone tried to scare you by throwing an eyeball at you, you'd laugh." She would. "Now? Now you look like a rabbit that has no time to run and is just laying low hoping whatever's hunting it passes by."

Nicole shut up for a moment, only looking at the brunette in front of her incredulously. Maybe she was far more attentive than she gave her credit for.

"Uh. Just thinking." At a raised dark eyebrow, the no shit went unsaid, so Nicole tried to elaborate. "About earlier. When we were with your sisters and Daniela uh- Daniela called me your lover."

Saying that the words felt awkward on her tongue was close to the year's biggest understatement. It felt like pulling out teeth would be an easier task. Nicole had never been good with her words, having learned since childhood to keep her mouth shut. But the fact that Cassandra seemed to share her struggle brought some semblance of comfort.

"And?" As if they were talking about the weather.

"And… was she right in describing me as such?"

She couldn't help a small gulp when the brunette stopped walking, looking at her with a frown. Any sane person would be at the very least somewhat afraid in this situation. Sanity however was scarce these days as Nicole was afraid, though not of the bodily harm that may come from her inquiry, but rather of Cassandra's answer.

"Nicole, your tongue has been in my mouth." Amongst many other places.

The redhead's cheeks turned a slight shade of crimson and she mumbled for an answer. She wasn't sure how to tell her that sleeping together did not automatically make them lovers. But then again, Cassandra's thoughts remained a mystery more than anything.

Thankfully the brunette took the metaphorical reins of the conversation and stepped forward. She wrapped her hands around Nicole's arms, gentler than one would imagine possible from her, and bent down to whisper no more than an inch away from her ear.

"I'll have you know, I'm not particularly fond of letting anyone I don't deem important touch me. Especially not the way you do."

The words made something flutter in Nicole's chest, an unfamiliar and comforting warmth. Said warmth got chipped away at the slightest bit when Cassandra pulled back to look her in the eyes.

"Should I take it that it's not mutual then?" Cassandra's tone was nonchalant, almost as if she didn't truly care about the answer. She could keep doing whatever she wanted either way, afterall who was going to stop her? But to someone who got familiar with all her small quirks and habits, the waver in her voice was more than clear.

"No." The world slipped from her lips with no hesitation.

No hesitation, because the more she thought about it, and she didn't need to think a lot mind you, the more Nicole realized that she couldn't remember a time when she felt the way she did here. Sure the initial threat of death looming over her head was anything but pleasant, but once that melted into affection and nights spent in Cassandra's arms the thought of leaving didn't as much as graze her mind.

"No, no. It is," she repeated, more certainty making its way into her tone.

At that Cassandra smiled. A small, almost shy one would say if they knew her well enough, smile. Her shoulders seemed to lose some of their tension when she leaned down again, her lips stopping not even an inch away. Nicole wasted no time leaning forward, their mouths meeting in a kiss that mixed softness and need beautifully. Their lips slid against each other until, surprisingly, it was Cassandra to pull back and sigh.

"Come sleep, we have some cutting up to do in the morning."

Nicole frowned. "Tomorrow? Wasn't that supposed to be due in a few days?"

A devilish grin appeared on black lips, fangs shimmering ominously in the low light. "Bela caught a foolish man-thing sneaking around the forest on the castle grounds. She's really excited to turn this one into a nice steak."

The redhead only let out an oh in acknowledgement. Foolish indeed. At least they could finally put into practice a few autopsy tricks Nicole had been itching to show her.

She let herself be guided back to Cassandra's chambers and into her bed, that she had grown intimately familiar with. The last thing she felt before falling asleep was the brunette's cool skin, pressed against her own. A welcomed comfort among the myriad of soft pillows that surrounded them. Nicole wondered briefly if being undead meant it was hard to keep yourself warm, but the thought quickly slipped away as she fell into a dreamless sleep.

#cassandra dimitrescu x maiden #unhinged maiden™ my beloved #bela dimitrescu #daniela dimitrescu #double edged scalpel #fanfic #the dimitrescu daughters

[barnesandrogersfanfics]

Ocean Eyes - Part 13

A/N - OMG finally an update!!! I'm so sorry it has taken me so long but writers block is a bitch! Thank you all for sticking with me and being so patient 💕💕💕 Please like/comment/reblog.

"CHRIS EVANS HAS A SECRET FAMILY!"

Shit, shit. Shit! Oh my fuck this can't be happening!! I thought to myself as i clicked on the link Hannah had sent me, the page loaded showing photo's of Chris and I kissing, photo's of Chris and Mason...... my heart was racing and i could feel the panic setting in.

"Fucking Brian!" I mumbled, this was taken the day i saw his car outfront! I got up and made my way to Chris' office, i needed to let him know about this ASAP incase he was suddenly blind sided with a question while doing his interview.

As soon as i appeared in the doorway Chris looked up and gave me a little smile that soon fell when he saw the tears in my eyes.

"Im so sorry but can you just excuse me for two seconds..... i'll be right back" Chris said leaving Scott talking to Jimmy Fallon.

"Whats wrong?....." he asked quietly pulling the door closed behind him.

"Im so sorry Chris....." i shook my head.

"Why? Whats happened?...."

I passed him my phone showing him the headline and photo's "Everyone knows, I'm so sorry! This is all my fault...." i started to cry, this isn't how i wanted everyone to find out... we weren't ready for everyone to know yet!!

"Hey stop! This isn't your fault sweetheart!" Chris wrapped his arms around me "come on don't cry, i hate it when you cry".

"Im so mad Chris!...they have no right posting photo's of Mason!"

"Let me just go finish up this interview, i'll be two minutes" he kissed me before rushing back to finish up with Jimmy.

After Chris had finished up his interview he was calling his publicist Megan, he already had missed calls from her so she had obviously heard what was going on. An hour later she was sat on the sofa across from us listening to the whole story.

"I want those photo's of my son taken down now! They can't post photo's of my 6 year old for everyone to see!" Chris was yelling as he paced the room.

"I've already put in a call and told them to take it down, but you know its gonna be out there now....you can't hide from this Chris"

"I know but.... fuck! We didn't want Mason in the public eye..... he's just a kid!"

"I get it, they should have at least blurred his face in the shots, most tabloids do nowadays unless the parents give consent but this particular tabloid that published the story, they're not one of the big names so they're more interested in their 5 minutes of fame with this exclusive"

"Brian did this. He did it to hurt me, its not even about the money! He could've sold the story to one of the big tabloids and got a payout..." i shook my head "the guy is crazy! I wasn't even dating him!"

"We're gonna try and do something about him too, leave it with me" Megan gave me a small smile while writing something in her notebook "So, you should probably post something on your socials.... clear up the gossip. Usually id say don't react to this but we need to do some damage control because right now, i guarantee all people are thinking is either you've been an absentee father with no interest in your son for the past six years" she said looking to Chris "or you'll be public enemy number one for keeping Chris's son from him" she looked over to me and i lowered my head in shame, i had done that..... i had my reasons but i did it all the same.

"So what do we say?" I asked quietly as Chris came and sat beside me taking my hand.

"We say that even though the two of you haven't been together romantically up until now, you have been raising your son together but chose to keep him out of the public eye"

"I'll put something together for you to look over, make sure you think its okay" Chris told her.

"I know this isn't great but we can handle this"

"Thank you Megan".

Over the next couple of days things gradually calmed down, Chris had posted a simple statement which i was told to post too even though my accounts were private to friends only, he didn't go into much detail but confirmed that we do have a son together and asked for our privacy to be respected.

His fans had actually been amazing and so supportive, of course there were a few saying some not so nice things about me and Mason but we knew that would happen. The tabloid stories quickly disappeared regarding Mason when other celebrities started posting, calling the tabloids out for not respecting our privacy after we had made it clear we didn't want our son in the spotlight.

But i still had this constant pit in my stomach, a feeling that things would still get worse before they went back to normal.

I was currently laid on the bed next to a basket of laundry that needed folding and putting away, I had retreated upstairs with the excuse of doing laundry while Chris, Scott and Mason were out back playing some game. The truth was i just needed some alone time, i was tired of putting on a brave and happy face, pretending like everything was fine. My hands massaged my temples trying to shift the dull headache that seemed like a constant thing lately.

"Hey, you okay?" The sound of Chris's voice from the door way made me crack open an eye to look at him.

"Yeah, headache is all"

"You've been up here a while, i got worried"

"I was doing laundry i told you....."

"You mean the laundry still sitting next to you?" He teased with a raised eyebrow.

"Yep, i started then i got a headache. I just need a few minutes" i said quietly closing my eyes again.

"Sweetheart you know you can talk to me, you don't have to act like everything is fine....."

"Yes i do, if i don't I'm gonna loose it and i can't do that with Mason around".

I felt the bottom of the bed dip and opened my eyes to see Chris crawling up the bed towards me, he moved my legs so his upper body was resting between them as he pressed kisses to my T-shirt covered stomach.

"What are you doing?" I shook my head and chuckled at the playful look he had on his face.

"Trying to cheer you up, maybe help you forget for a while" he smirked pushing my T-shirt up more so he could kiss my bare skin this time.

"Is now really the time for that? Mason is awake downstairs...."

"Its the perfect time for that, Scott will keep Mason busy"

"You dont know that....."

Chris quickly pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped quickly on the screen before tossing it aside.

"Done, no distractions" he laughed.

"Oh god please don't tell me you told Scott why?"

"Of course not but he's not stupid"

"This is a bad idea..... we said slow...."

"This is slow, i just wanna make you feel better. Plus you know orgasm's are supposed to help with headaches" he shrugged with that cocky grin.

"Oh really? Is that right?"

"100%" he nodded making us both laugh, he reached for my shorts and starting to pull the them down my legs...

"Wait!" I said suddenly sitting up to look at him making him groan as he looked back at me from between my legs.

"What?"

"Lock the door would ya?" I giggled throwing myself back down on the bed shaking my head as he leapt from the bed and flipped the lock.

"Now where were we?" He said before crawling back into position.....this was a bad idea.

Everything taglist: @jesseswartzwelder @dumblani @barnesandrogersworld @patzammit @rynabarnesrogers-reading @rainbowkisses31 @rororo06 @supernaturalwintersoldier @fairlightswiftly @hiddelstannerbarnes @bellamy-barnes @buchanansebba @rosalynshields @turtoix @dottirose

Ocean eyes: @supraveng @michelehansel @melissaglenn5 @denisemarieangelina

@mrsjeffwittek @mery-be @marvelfansworld @cmalass @capstopavenger @fallenoutofrose @kelbabyblue @biebsmylife95 @loser-alert @traceyaudette @w3lissax @jennmurawski13 @ford66steal @saiyanprincessswanie @christocrave

@jakiki94 @torntaltos @my-dearest-agent @ms-betsy-fangirl

#chris evans #reader insert #chris evans x reader #ocean eyes

[giggleandtears]

Crimson Renegade, Part 3

What it feels like to match wits (With someone at your level) 

Summary: Danvers and Kirk enjoy winding McCoy up

Pairings: OC/Jim Kirk(Platonic), OC/Leonard McCoy(Eventual Romance)

A/N: If you haven't seen Star Trek Discovery season 2, Pike makes it well worth it. ;-)

Enjoy!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Guiding me to the closest patient area, McCoy offers his hand to assist me in sliding onto the bio-bed. Jim quirks a brow at the chivalrous gesture but McCoy has already turned away to gather a few supplies for the exam. When Jim saddles up beside him, my mind runs wild with comparing the two men. Though they are roughly the same height, the air that surrounds them couldn’t be more different.  

Jim’s flaxen hair, crystal blue eyes, and perfectly chiseled jawline, screams fairy tale prince more than captain. Unless you use Captain Pike, circa 2250, as a barometer. Jim’s the type to whisk you off for an idyllic weekend getaway in a cabin, nestled between snow-capped mountains. A roaring fire would await, champagne chilled and at the ready. I think Dr. McCoy would take a slightly different approach. The fire would remain, as would a refreshing beverage. But replace the champagne with bourbon laden hot chocolate. The cabin would stand resolute against the onslaught of swirling flurries, having been built with the strength of his bare hands. Jim and McCoy are two sides of the same coin but only one is commanding my full attention.

"Ok, what you playin' at?” McCoy whispers to Jim, like salt through a grinder. It’s not standard practice for the captain to escort an uninjured crew member to the Med-bay just for a friendly hello. Jim looks on in unabashed amusement and lets McCoy continue his tirade. “We almost got shot to tarnation and you’re here to introduce a woman? Good god man! Have you no shame?” He says in a huff, gathering and regathering the same tricorder and PADD. “Are those boots even regulation?”

“They are.” I chime in sweetly, like honey flowing fresh from the comb. The boys slowly turn at McCoy’s covert mutterings being so easily overheard. “But the tights sadly are not, yet.”

Walking over to me, McCoy places the PADD beside me and can’t stop his eyes from wandering down. Under further inspection, my boots are indeed regulation, stopping just above my calves. The tights, however, are of my own design. Dark mesh blends expertly with my boots before shifting into a less opaque hue, coming to a point over my knee. Tracing McCoy’s gaze downward, I completely understand why the higher hemline of my dress uniform and the illusion of knee-high boots leaves the doctor’s mouth a bit parched.  

Clearing his voice before he continues, McCoy begins to run the tricorder around my head, then on a steady path from my forehead to abdomen and back. “So, what brings you to our favorite tin can in the sky?”

“I'm working on a new shield prototype with Scotty. Can't steal your head engineer, so here I am.”

“At least he's not on that ice planet anymore.” Jim says, with a nearly imperceptible shiver.  

“You always say that, but I had fun on Hoth.”

Shaking his head, Jim snorts wryly. “You’re about the only one.”

McCoy raises his brow at the name, no doubt never hearing of that planet in any star system. Sadly, that also means his knowledge of historical fiction is sorely lacking. How it’s not a more beloved genre is beyond me. Jim mouths ‘You don’t want to know’ to McCoy and lets it drop.  

“Keenser’s hooch always kept me warm. And what else do you really need besides that and good company?” I say. “Besides, it never seemed to be as cold as everyone whined it was.”  

A small smile highlights McCoy’s handsome features as he continues my scan. Although the warmth of his smile is unmistakable, the delicate lines around his eyes seem to narrate a tale of inner weariness. Something tells me coffee, a nap, or even a stiff drink couldn’t lessen whatever’s weighting on his shoulders.  

Returning to the conversation at hand, McCoy’s asks about my position on the Enterprise. “If you're a commander, doesn’t that make you chief engineer?”

“A commander is usually the head of a department. If Scotty needs me, I’ll be there to lend a hand but the prototype is my first priority.”

McCoy hums lowly in understanding, although his gaze has been diverted. He's concentrating deeply on the tricorder in his hands. After each tap of the device, his expressive brows grow closer and closer together.

“Something wrong?”

“Yea.” McCoy begins in a huff. “This darn thing is on the fritz again. I tried a few tricks Scotty taught me but nothin’s workin’. I assumed you were human and bypassed the initial scan but that didn’t help. You are human right?”

“To my knowledge, I am. Is trans-species a thing?”

“You’d be surprised.” McCoy says wryly. “All I got was you’re alive, but a bucktooth gopher in a melon patch is less obvious than that.”

I fail at holding back a snort.  “I have absolutely no idea what that means but it was certainly entertaining.” Offering to take a look, I extend my hand. “Let me see.” The blueprint for each circuit board and screen readout, run through my brain with ease. Fiddling with the small piece of technology is as natural as breathing.  Feeling the heavy gaze of a man no more than 2 paces away from me, is not. Widening his stance, McCoy impatiently crosses his arms after I open the back of the tricorder. I don’t think my brooding companion takes kindly to anything impeding his work, especially a pesky piece of equipment. “The circuits and connectors are in perfect condition, not charred or corroded. So, it must be a programming issue.” Replacing the back of the tricorder, I widen a few scan parameters and disable a couple more, then hand it back to McCoy. “Here, try this.”

After restarting the scan, the familiar steady beeps resume.  

“Well how ‘bout that.” McCoy says, with quiet astonishment. “How’d you know to do that?”

Swinging my legs like a schoolgirl, “Engineers are more than contraband and a good time, Dr. McCoy.”  I say, with cock my head and a cheeky grin. “Or haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve heard a lot of things but that don’t make’em true.”

Leaning the tiniest bit forward, “Is that a challenge?”  

McCoy meets my eye with a sumptuous quirk of his brow. “Only if you can deliver.”

A smile slowly spreads across my face. His steady gaze is electric, sending waves of heat to tickle my skin. Neither of us is backing down. With each passing millisecond something becomes abundantly clear; I am in trouble. Jim clears his throat, breaking us of the spell neither of us intended to cast. Honestly, I forgot Jim was even here.

Leaning back, I straighten my spine and clasp my hands in my lap. Professional as always. “So, did your scan turn up anything interesting?”

“Yea. Are you always this hot?” McCoy asks innocently, without any trace of innuendo.  

This is just too easy.  

Before I can reply, McCoy corrects himself.  “Is your temperature always this high?”

He’s learning  

“Yes. My temperature is usually above average for most humans. 99.3 to 102.4 is normal for me.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

Smiling, “I thought doctors liked specificity.”  

I expected to hear a smart quip but it never comes. McCoy’s face has grown dark.

“There’s also a fair bit of pressure at your temples and occipital lobe.”

Jim stiffens, instantly on alert. A nervous stab blooms in my stomach. I just got here. I can’t be grounded already. McCoy places a calming hand on my shoulder but addresses Jim. Silently they spar, only using their expressive eyes to communicate. I can read Jim like a well-trained empath but McCoy is a completely different beast. The altercation only lasts a few seconds but the decision is final.  

Jim sighs and stuffs his hands roughly in his pockets. “I’ll be right over there, ok?” After nodding, he saunters up to nurse and starts a friendly conversation. Jim manages to only look back once, our concerned expressions mirroring each other.  

“If only he was as protective with himself as the rest of us.” McCoy says.

Smiling weakly, I hum in agreement. With an ever-increasing nervous energy, I pick at the jagged edge of my thumb nail. I’m willing the pressure in my head to subside before McCoy takes the tricorder to me again.  

As if I'm a doe in a wooden glen that’s easily spooked, McCoy speaks much softer than before. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain?”

I rub my forehead. “5, maybe.” Even to my own ears, it sounds more like a question than an answer.  

McCoy stares at me disapprovingly. Maybe I don’t have as good a poker face as I thought. He asks how long I've been having headaches and if they make my duties more difficult. I have to think back but it's been over 6 months. I can handle the pain but the dizziness that sometimes accompany them is harder to shake off. I've been found in a dark supply closet more times than I care to count. McCoy bobs his head with each detail I recount, though his lips remain pursed. He picks up the tricorder once again but decides to hand it off to a passing nurse.  

“Do hypos help with the pain?” McCoy asks. Vigorously rubbing his hands together, he steps forward. Meticulously, he feels around my throat and neck.  

“Only for a few hours.” I answer honestly.  

“What did your last physician say about them?”

“Since I could still fulfill my duties, not to worry until that changed.”

McCoy’s hands still. Exhaling harshly, his nostrils flare. “What kinda bonehead, idiotic...” With a sigh, McCoy calms himself. Letting the matter drop, he continues his exam. McCoy softly eases my head to the side to rest in his large palm. His nimble fingers purposefully flutter up and down the tendons in my neck, even into my shoulder blade. When he tilts my head back, I can’t help but stare. McCoy is so, determined. It’s as if my pain and discomfort are the only thing important to him. For a moment he closes his eyes to concentrate more intently on what he feels beneath his fingers. Smiling to myself, I close my own eyes before I’m caught.  

A slight sting radiates at the base of my neck where McCoy was focusing his attention.  His deft fingers and what I suspect was a sly hypo start to alleviate the pressure that’s been building for hours. Releasing a heavenly sigh of relief, I slowly blink open my eyes. Having them closed for only a few short moments; my lids have become quite heavy.  

McCoy tips my head back with a knuckle under my chin. When my eyes catch the light, he inhales suddenly. “Well I’ll be-.” He whispers, astonished. He slowly moves forward as if an invisible string is pulling us together. I’m enveloped by his impressive stature. His warmth seems to seep into my every pore and somehow, I already know I’ll miss it when he moves away. A sly smirk creeps onto my lips when McCoy’s eyes round in amazement. Imaging myself through his eyes is intriguing. Warm brown eyes of amber with flecks of maroon. It’s a fairly typical combination in this day and age, except they weren’t always like this. The longer the light shines in my eyes, the red specs bend and shift until it nearly overtakes the brown. I found the change to be off-putting at first but I've grown to like it.

McCoy leans in closer and cocks his head to the side. “Retinal morphic photoplasia.” Taking a pen light out his pocket and sweeps it over my eyes. “With a nearly a 47% increase in your concentering rate. That’s mighty rare.”

I shrug nonchalantly.  “Yea. It’s just one of my many tricks.”

McCoy smirks until he realizes how close he is to me. His hand has inched up from my neck and is cradling my cheek in his palm.  Clearing his throat, he gently guides my head down and releases me. Dr. McCoy returns to his PADD, tapping harshly. His faced is etched in frustration as he mumbles to himself. I sigh inwardly. I miss the teasing back and forth, the banter. I’d even settle for Mr. Grumpy Pants.  

I speak as light and airy as possible. “So, am I dying Doc?”

“No!” McCoy says, jerking upright. “Why would you go and say somethin’ like that?”

“Because you're looking at my readings like I have the plague.”

“Now that would be a magic trick, since it's been cured for over 600 years.” Sighing, McCoy places the PADD down. “I’m just not too keen on mysteries in my Medbay.”

McCoy explains my scans are in normal ranges, though a little odd. The headaches could be stress related but he’s concerned about the duration. Since I can't think of any triggers and I couldn’t have come into contact with any alien contagions, McCoy decides to take a few samples and run some more extensive test.  After getting a nurse up to speed, McCoy gives me some very pointed instruction.  “Tell me immediately if the headaches get worse. It doesn’t matter if you can still do your duties.”

“Sure thing, Dr. McCoy.” His name rolls easily off my tongue. However, McCoy’s pinched expression looks like his mama forgot to sweeten his lemonade. “Did I say something wrong?”  

He shakes his head ‘no’ but doesn’t offer any further explanation for his sour expression. I’m starting to think maybe that’s just his face.  

Shaking it off, “So, am I good to go?”

“Yes ma’am. No palpations, fever, or hives to speak of.” McCoy drawls.  

Smiling, “Great!  Thanks Doc. I'll try to keep it that way.” Hopping off the bio-bed, I look around the Medbay.  “Now where did my escort get to?”

“Jim,” McCoy says, hollering over his shoulder. “Don’t you have a ship to run?”

Jim says a few last words to an utterly bewitched nurse and walks away. He leisurely walks over, smiling to himself. “So, what I miss?”  

“I don’t know. Home trainin’?” McCoy says, dismissively. I snort softly into my hand and McCoy rewards me with a small smile. But Jim’s piercing gaze is squarely on McCoy, waiting for my results.

McCoy answers simply, all joking aside. “The commander is cleared for duty-”

“Glad to hear it!” Jim says. His jovial-self returning.

“And she knows where to find me if that changes.” McCoy gives me another pointed look for good measure.  

Inwardly I chuckle to myself but stand straight at attention. I give the doctor an emphatic though comical two-finger salute. I know we haven’t had an active military in centuries and technically McCoy and I have equal rank. But he understands me nonetheless. Or I should say we understand each other. If my condition changes and I don’t tell him, he will hunt me down and there will be hell to pay. McCoy nods curtly, satisfied with my answer. After a beat, his eyes soften and the corner of his mouth lifts just a touch. Relaxing again, I smile in return.  

Jim sees our mostly silent exchange and shakes his head. He looks like the cat that caught the canary and I’m not sure I like where this is headed. “You know I always thought you two would get along.” Jim may be right but that doesn’t mean he has to point it out. “You never let me have any fun.” Oh, how I wish that was true. “Both of you can drink me under the table.” True. Jim pauses for good measure. “And you both hate people.”

And there it is.  

Sighing, I pinch the bridge of my nose.  

“For Christ's sake-” McCoy growls.  

“I do not hate people!" We say in perfect unison.  

Slowly, McCoy and I look at each other with the same horrified expression. Brows in our hairlines, eyes bugging out and mouth agape.  We even mirrored each other’s tilted head. Neither of us know how to address what just happened, so we quickly act like it didn’t. McCoy becomes intensely interested in his PADD and I kick myself at falling for Jim’s bait so easily. His smirk is already insufferable but I do address his previous assertion.  

“After an 8-hour shift, who wants to be around people that can't hold a conversation, let alone a drink?” I ask rhetorically.  

“Couldn’t agree more darlin'.” McCoy says, clearly on my side.  

Trying to bite the inside of my cheek does little to disguise my smile. “Thank you.” I’m not sure what garners my appreciation more, his immediate understanding or being called darlin'. I haven't been called that particular term of endearment since I was a child. Oddly, I’m not averse to it. Especially coming from the doctor’s lips.  

“Wait,” Jim interjects, “are you finally admitting there are people you don’t like Commander?”

“Yes, and you are quickly becoming one of them Captain.”

This is quickly ramping up into a tit for tat situation and McCoy is having none of it. “Jim, can you let my patient get a hot meal before you start up again?”

Snickering, I mouth ‘Thank you’ and head for the door. As the doors slide open, I stop and look behind me. Jim is slowly walking with his back towards the door, whispering something to McCoy. I don’t know what he’s saying but McCoy crossed his arms in a huff. “Jim, you coming?” Jim turns smoothly on his heel, not missing a beat. The moment Jim’s back is to McCoy something peculiar happens. His arms drop and he … chuckles. His broad shoulders gently shake until he sighs to himself. For a moment he stares into space. The makings of a smile start to form-

“Danny, you coming?”

Jumping slightly, I turn towards Jim’s voice. He’s mere inches from my ear. After scowling in his general direction, I try to get one more glance at McCoy but he’s already gone. We walk in companionable silence toward my quarters but Jim is determined to spoil it. He keeps smirking like he has a secret every time he catches my eye. Its driving me nuts.  

Exhaling slowly, I mourn my sanity. “I know you have something to say. Spit it out.”

Jim shrugs nonchalantly but smiles nonetheless. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just that you owe me a bottle of whiskey.”

#star trek #star trek aos #jim kirk #leonard mccoy x reader #leonard mccoy #bones #jim kirk/oc #leonard mccoy/oc #enterprise #star trek enterprise #red shirt #fanfic #fanfiction #jim kirk x oc #leonard mccoy x oc

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

agajsksns not gonna lie being 10 feet tall sounds awesome. i have no idea how tall that is because the only thing i know about feet (that sounds so wrong) is that google is telling me that i'm 5'6 (sorry to disappoint). which is. average height right? well it doesn't feel like it coz my best friends are giants. they're both 180+ cm tall and they constantly make fun of me for being short. but honestly i win because i can always make them reach things for me.

thank you! that's very sweet, i actually only saw your reply like 20 minutes before the new year so it was right on time! i loved writing to you and waiting to hear back as well, you're a really fun person to talk to!

i know you probably won't see this for a couple of weeks before going on holiday, but have fun!

i laughed really hard at the picture my brain conjured up when reading about you dropping the vampire act and starting to pretend to be a mouse, just straight up scurrying up to the houses on all fours in a bathrobe is hilarious. i'd pay to see that. and yeah! me either. the number of times i've gone outside at night is probably like 3. that's counting that time when i went for ice cream at 11pm to the store on the other side of the street in my pajamas and then had to turn back because it apparently closes at 10 pm. that was a pretty big disappointment

a halloween themed birthday party sounds awesome! it's sort of disappointing though that you can barely remember it. the only themed birthday party i had (or at least the only one that i remember) was princess themed because i was on my princess faze back then (i was 5 or 6 i think). i still remember the sheer joy i felt at being able to wear a long fancy dress. it was brilliant

oh yeah! i'm still slightly scared of blenders because of that time. now anytime i even put my fingers close to the blade i unplug it first. also i saw you got a blender? i think we have one that's similar to the one you described. so i have a couple of suggestions! i like to make banana "ice cream". you just cut up a banana into pieces and freeze it, (i have no idea how long it takes to freeze i just generally always have frozen bananas in my freezer) then you take them out, let them sit for 10 minutes (to not break the blender when you use it) and blend them. i sometimes add frozen berries or peanut butter too! depending on what i want that day. it's great, especially because i'm slightly lactose intolerant too and i absolutely love ice cream. you can also make smoothies as you said. i usually put in mine whatever fruit we have, generally apples, bananas and oranges or grapefruits. or if i'm making one for breakfast (which i know you can't, but this is just a generally more filling option i think?) i also add spinach. you can't really feel the taste but it's supposed to be good for you and it fills you up more (it does make the smoothie super green though!). but yeah i pretty much just mix and match anything i have! also: milkshakes. ice cream, berries (optional) and milk! super easy and my little cousins love it when they visit!

ohhh your grater also seems to be out to get you. i bet it's really painful if it actually falls on your feet, because like metal. on foot. ouch. especially if it hits you with a corner! and i would definitely also get surprised every time it happened no matter how many times it did! bifocal glasses do not sound fun either tho. i would constantly forget how to use them and probably would just get headache really fast too! i get a headache from my normal glasses when i wear them (i usually wear contacts) so bifocal ones would be even worse i bet.

exactly. i had no idea what "hot" means. i thought you were supposed to use it when you thought a person was aesthetically pleasing? or like you thought they look cute? i dunno. i used it a couple of times before i realised that was not what that meant and then i was just like uhhhh yeah i'm gonna delete that word from my vocab. yeah! i think that ace and probably aro too are pretty hard to figure out because it's the lack of something.

ahahsksns i can imagine tiny Lindsey waking up on Christmas morning and running to the window expecting snow in the middle of summer and it's so funny! i can't say anything though because we have this saying in lithuanian which is used essentially when someone does something unexpected and unusual for them so you say "it's gonna snow tomorrow". as in "wow, [name] did [something super unexpected from them], it must be snowing tomorrow" (because like those are equally unexpected things i guess? but it's said in winter too so it's just something you say whenever, i'm sorry it's hard to explain!) but yeah a figure of speech. and anytime i heard that, even in the middle of summer, the next morning i'd run to my window and look for snow and when there was none, i'd just stare accusatorily at my parents. like wow, i can't believe you lied/let someone lie to me

horse races sound fun, i've never been to one though! and a picnic luch sounds awesome! i love picnics but we have them very rarely, i definitely think we should have them more often

and yeah, i get that acid reflux more of an annoyance than a problem but still! i completely agree with you about peanut butter though. it's amazing, i could eat it everyday

I know exactly how tall 10 feet is purely because I’m 5 foot so two of me is 10 foot. I barely know feet but I got used to people being confused when I was like oh, I’m 155cm! so I learnt what my height was in feet but I can really only visualise heights when I put them into centimetres. Someone can be like I’m 6 foot! and that’s great but I don’t have the faintest idea how tall that actually is. 182cm on the other hand is easy. that’s just like one ruler above my height. I can picture that. 5 foot 6 is probably average but as a short person, I consider you tall. That really isn’t saying much at my height but still sdflshdfks. Biggest benefit of tall best friends is indeed making them reach high things though. 

And now we’re almost three weeks into the new year. Time seems to be flying this year. This is a very late reply indeed sdfjhskdfs. I did see this before I left but didn’t have time to reply, thank you though! I did have lots of fun. I had some birds try to invade the unit up in Orewa and I had a dotterel (I think) follow me along the beach at Ngarimu Bay playing some sort of red light green light game with me (it only moved closer and started following me again when I looked away) and I think a blackbird started some sort of mating performance at me which was flattering but uhhhh I’m a bit of a big bird mate. Maybe choose someone else. there was also beaches and gorgeous views etc etc but birds, y’know. birds.

i would 100% do that for money with no regrets. on one hand I could get a job and contribute to society. on the other hand I could do that as my main income. not a hard choice. hire me by the hour to freak your family and friends out. i have no respect for myself i’ll do it to anyone for the right price. damn. only closed one hour earlier. that’s a massive disappointment. i was out at night willingly for my high school prom and for a creative writing night at my uni and inside a car if that counts when I think my family was travelling back from the south island when I was younger. So three times that come to mind. Oh. And if stupid camp burma trails count then add a few times to that but those were not night outings I did willingly.

I can barely remember most of my life, I just assume it happened and I wasn’t just planted here at 12 years old as an alien spy. Anything’s possible though. I remember my birthday cakes more than my birthday parties to be honest with you. My mum always made the cake and when I was young she’d make fun designs. A bee, a bat, a swimming pool and a cat come to me off the top of my head. They were mostly just sponge cats but she cut them and iced them expertly. A princess-themed party seems like a very fun type of party for kids who like that. Kids always seem very happy to dress up in pretty dresses and cool outfits to attend those kinds of parties. I can imagine the joy. I know my little cousin looooves that sort of thing, and her brother isn’t willing to be left out either

thank god you unplug it first now sdfjhsdf that’s incredibly reassuring. Ooo thank you for those suggestions!!! this is great!! I was wanting to try something with bananas and that sounds easy enough. I had an apple and feijoa smoothie while I was away on holiday and all I want is another one of those. So I’m very very very interested in trying out fruit smoothies now because they seem like they can be very very tasty. Spinach seems like such an odd thing to add but I’ve heard that several times now so clearly it’s a thing. I don’t think I’ve ever even had spinach. I’ll keep it in mind though. I suppose if I just try whatever fruit we have on hand eventually I’ll get something that tastes good. I have dairy free ice cream and dairy free milk so it seems like this could work out for me in a way where I’m not regretting my entire life. Normally when I go near a milkshake I regret the day I was born.

It isn’t a super heavy grater but I have intense survival instincts every now and then so it hasn’t actually hit my foot yet. I go diving in the other direction. But I think if it did I’d probably curse a few times before moving on with my life. I don’t think it’d be THAT bad. But I live in fear regardless. oh no. do your normal glasses have a slightly wrong prescription or is this just a thing that happens when you normally wear contacts,,, I’ve never worn contacts because I fear touching my squishy eyeball and also I think my shitty eyesight is too awkward for contacts so I have no idea if that’s a thing.

oh yes haha hot has been solidly deleted from my vocab for many years except in terms of temperature. It has a word that has never naturally come to mind and I’m sure it never will. It just seems weird when I use it. 

I was a fool of a child and absolutely nothing has changed there! I mean I know how hemispheres work now but I’m still a dumbass at heart. Hahahahahaha oh nooooo. That’s incredible but oh noooo. I get what you mean by the saying though, that’d make a lot of sense here honestly since it never snows ever. Locally, at least. 

i think horse races are just a form of betting and losing money that is frowned upon less than actual buildings based on gambling and such. I mean I only ever attended those ones, idk if all horse races are like that, but I know there was buying tickets for whatever horse you thought would win, and if they did you got money, if they didn’t you lost money. I don’t think it was a whole lot of money ? just like a few bucks ? but maybe you could choose to bet more ? I really don’t remember how it worked, I just remember accidentally finding a ticket on the ground and handing it in only to receive some money because the horse won. I think it was like 5 or 10 bucks which seemed like a LOT to my kid self. picnic lunches are fun though. my family keeps a tartan blanket in the back of the car that we use whenever we have picnics and also whenever we get takeaways (we put it in the middle of the lounge floor as the rest of my family eats fish and chips and I eat sushi, normally). But we don’t have as many as we used to. They are fun though.

can confirm i do eat peanut butter everyday and it goes brilliantly.

#orewa is up near auckland kinda #i mean it's part of auckland but it's. auckland is just too big ok it's weird cities are weird #ngarimu bay is harder to pin down even google maps won't recognise it #it'll take you to thornton bay which is the next bay over #it's not far from thames kinda near the coromandel idk there's no big city to identify the location with #if you don't know what burma trails are they are just an excuse to torture children #ok not exactly but i hated them they scared the shit out of me #you walk through the bush at night blindfolded following a rope trying to get to the end #and you have to navigate around trees and over rocks and such #and teachers and parents scare you because they're bastards and possums MAY run over you #anyway they were awful imo #i've explained this before but idk if it was to you or someone else sdfjsdf my memory is shocking #also i cannot have grapefruit anymore and this is a terrible shame #thank u medications that hate grapefruit :) #i've been eating a marshmallow leg while typing this it's alarming how much i've gotten through #i like that they're called santa legs like children who wants to eat santa??? #is it cannibalism is santa portrayed as human #technicalities are important here #uhhhh i mean have a good day!!! #Anonymous

[2idiots]

Keep Yourself Alive

pt. 6 // pt. 7 // pt. 8a

word count: 1,667ish

NCT Frat Social Media AU // College Athlete & Fratboy Lucas x reader

warnings: not really any, kind angsty, more than just mentions of chronic pain

(I don't know how but the second paragraph got deleted when I first uploaded. I have since added it in. So if you see something new that's why)

---

Getting Johnny from outside the building to inside your room was a lot more difficult than you expected. This was partially because your best friend was much drunker than his texts suggested and partially because each step was sending a pain reverberating down your legs and up your abdomen. A pain that you knew the mild over-the-counter pain meds would do little to numb but you had taken them with false hope anyway. Before your best friend had forced you into letting his drunkass in you were curled into your bed with a heating pad pressed into your abdomen, hoping eventually exhaustion would win over excruciating pain.

This was the real reason you bolted out of Jet Lag the minute your friends were off in different directions distracted. The pain had triggered before Mark's open mic night started but you were not about to miss the night you friend had been talking about for weeks. This was so important to him and you had to be there. So you sucked it up and promised yourself to duck out the moment it was clear and Mark had performed. Woo noticing and staying over for a few hours was just a welcomed surprise. And the leftover baked goods he brought were another plus side, not that you had any appetite. At least your blubbering fool of a friend would benefit from the pile of pastries sitting on your desk, if you could make it past the giggling desk attendant.

The first time you walked passed her with bleary eyes, focused on only the task ahead she called out something about the “cute Oppa” at the door. Immediately a gag raced up your throat at that, Johnny? A cute Oppa? Gross. He was like your brother, actually more like your overprotective mother. Sure you joked about Johnny being a daddy, but it was all shits and giggles to make him mad with Mark. He wasn't actually one.  The second time she made some sort of pass at him that you blocked out and stifled another gag. You didn’t need to see or hear that child making passes at your best friend.

That wasn’t the only thing she was giggling at though. You and Johnny were quite the sight. He was a stumbling, stuttering fool and you were wearing pajamas that had been picked out in the dark, not even your shoes matched. These were things you had thrown on when Johnny begged you to let him in but your headache was pounding too much to turn the lights on, which was also the reason for the sunglasses. 

Speaking of Big Foot, he was using you almost completely as a support and he weighed a lot more than his bony ass looked. How he managed to make it to your building from 7th Sense was beyond you, he could barely make it three steps without giggling and sliding around. Honestly this made you more than a little nervous for Mark, usually he was the giggly one after a few drinks. If Johnny was this drunk, then Mark could very well be dead.

Overall the hardest obstacle for Johnny to maneuver around was your actual room. He tripped over everything. Maybe it was his long spindly legs combined with the alcohol, but he even fell just trying to walk over your rug. You had to catch him before he face planted. Of course he just contiuned blabbering about the night and how well it went the whole time, even while laughing at his clumsiness. “Then Mark fell! Kinda like how he is falling for sunflower boy but like fell… on the actual ground… like how I just almost fell!” To which you just nodded, handing him a pastry and an ice cold water bottle. “And Jae was so funny, he was talking about the basketball team and one of their parties last week where someone drank beer from a ball that had been cut in half. Isn’t that gross?”

“Yeah babe, real gross,” You nodded, trying to push him toward your bed. You might not have been asleep before he messaged but you were still in bed ready to sleep and you wanted to be back there. “Can you get in bed, Jojo? I'll tired.”

Following your direction like a lost lamb, Johnny swiftly removed all his out layers and climbed into your bed continuing to talk about the basketball team and how pretty and funny they were, all the while giving you very pointed looks. Or at least he was prattling on until he went completely silent and tense before screeching, “THERE’S SOMETHING WARM!”

Arms crossed and irritation pulsed through you at the scream, you leaned over to pull the heating pad out from under him and wiggled it around in your outstretched hand, “Johnny you’ve met HP before, HP meet Big Foot.”

“HP? You named your heating pad?” He questioned already snuggling back into your sheets like he owned the bed. This happened every time he was over, sober or drunk it didn’t matter; Johnny took up every blanket and pillow in your entire bed: partially because his size, mostly because he was an asshole. One of the many reasons you were hesitant to let him stay over anymore, even though you always ended up letting him stay.

“Might as well, he’s in my bed so often,” You grinned before grabbing another water bottle out of the mini fridge in the corner of the room and tossing it his direction. While this wasn’t a common occurrence, drunk Johnny, you did know that he would wake up in three hours whining about a dry mouth and you didn't want to deal with it.

“I mean he wasn’t on Halloween.” Luckily you flipped the lights off before you could see his suggestive eyebrow wiggle. Here was the worst part, talkative drunk Johnny taking an interest in your life and trying to lay down his tips on life. 

Grabbing an extra blanket for yourself you slid in next to him and laughed that thought off, “Actually HP was, ALSO I thought we agreed to not talk about Halloween, leave the past behind us and all.”

“Behind us? Is that how you like it y/n?” He let out a slight whimper when you turned over enough to give him a solid kick to the shin. This alcohol was giving him far more confidence than normal and you didn’t like it. Throwing his hands up, Johnny tossed out a worthless apology and whined, “I deserved that ok. But you know I wouldn’t call it the past, don’t you tutor the dude?”

That elicited a quiet response from you, a simple, “Yeah.”

“Isn’t it like two or three times a week?” He didn’t stop his incessant babbling long enough for you to answer, adding on, “You’re quite popular, my friends keep asking about you too.” Then a switch suddenly flipped in Johnny’s mind, evident by how he practically climbed over you to switch the lamp back on and give you his best mom glare, “Wait, you’re sleeping with HP?” You let out a few weak protests as the light flooded your room and his bony ass arm squished you down into the bed digging into your side. Drunk friends sucked. Too bad you loved them too much to leave them on the street. “So you’re in pain? You’re in pain and you didn’t say anything? You just went home alone and lied to Mark and me?”

“Johnny I always sleep with a heating pad and I’m always in pain. It's not a big deal.” Tonight just happened to be bad, still was, but you left that part out. “Also Jungwoo just left; I wasn’t alone.” That was accompanied by a successful effort to push him off so you could flip the light off again and snuggle into the heating pad again. “Now go to sleep, I'm tired.”

There was a brief moment of silence before you heard sniffling and an occadsional shuffle.

“Are you crying?” You asked incredulously, flipping over to see him hastily wiping away his tears in the ambient light filtering in through the window. Sure enough, your bitch-ass best friend was laying on the other side of the bed using his white undershirt to wipe his tears away. At least he was smart enough not to use your sheets as the tissue. “Stop crying.” This was new. Your friends probably knew way too much about how hard your days were getting, in fact Johnny had driven you to the ER one too many times over the past year and a half, but they had never cried in front of you. At least not about you. 

You hated it.

His immediate response was denial, no he wasn’t crying. These weren’t tears, they were allergies. "Leaks in my face." But you still heard him mutter a muted “I just want you to be happy and not in pain” as the alcohol running through his system finally knocked him out.

You were struck silent, not sure how to respond. Sure he was your closest friend and that meant he had to like you, but this affection made breathing a little hard: your chest not quite expanding like it should. You felt a warm tear roll down your cheek as you turned to face the other side of the room, an effort to get away. This was exactly why you didn't tell them about tonight, you didn't want them burdened with your pain. They should have to suffer just because you were. 

Ignoring the ache in your chest, you blindly reached out for where you set your phone on the bedside table. You still may not be able to sleep but you could get some reading done and maybe forget the sound of Johnny's tears. And maybe, just maybe, the words would lull you into some dreamlike state so you could rest. It was only a few minutes into reading that a text interrupted the chapter. 

summary: College is hard enough, right? Coursework, two jobs, a social life, and the state of your mental health. As if that was enough now the school’s no.1 athlete won’t leave you alone after a one night stand. And maybe you like him back but you have a tendency to run when life gets too difficult especially now that undiagnosed chronic pain just seems to be getting worse with each passing month.

(I've decided updates will be Thursday at 6pm. I hope you enjoy this chapter)

Taglist: @princeofshenzhenuwus

#nct imagines #nct social media au #nct xuxi #lucas nct #lucas nct imagines #wayv yukhei #wayv imagines #wayv social media au #wayv x reader #wong yukhei #yukhei imagines #yukhei x reader

[bobasheebaby]

70 Scrubs Prompts

Yup, another prompt list. Most of these are actually light and funny, though some are a little heavier. I tried to pick ones that would work outside of a hospital setting. Again it’s super long so cutting at 15. 

1 “And who’s to say this isn’t what happens? Who can tell me that my fantasies won’t come true? Just this once ... “ — John JD Dorian

2 “Look NAME, I don’t know if it’s possible for me to put how I feel about you into words, but I guess I’ll give it a shot. I never really believed I’d find somebody that I love as much as you. I love you more than anything in the whole world. NAME, I love you more than FRIEND.” “Oh my god” “It's kind of hard for me to say, but it's true.” — John JD Dorian and Elliot Reid

3 “I grew up on the street ... No, not the hood. The Sesame Street.” — John JD Dorian

4 “As I looked at all the relationships around me ... Some that had gone on forever ... some that were reigniting ... and some that had just begun ... I realized something: It should have been me.” — John JD Dorian

5 “NAME, you can’t test love. When I met NAME, it seemed he/she was more in love with his/her best friend than with me.” “Honey, they’ve got that almond biscotti FRIEND loves, so I was wondering if I could borrow some money so I can get him/her some.” “No, you got him/her a present yesterday.” — Carla and Turk

6 “You’ve been wrong so many times that I'm not even going to say something is wrong anymore. I'm going to say that it's 'NAME'.

— Perry Cox

7 “I just took a pregnancy test, just tell me when a minute's up.” “I just put some pizza rolls on the microwave oven; the minute that bad boy rings we're good to go.” “Oh, my god, I can't stand it, 30 more seconds.” “OK baby, don't get too excited, they have to cool off for at least a minute.” — Carla and Turk

8 “So, uh, you going to lunch with your brother/sister?” “Yeah, I... well, you know, I would've invited you, but I already made the reservation for two.” “So call and change it to three.” “Ohh, I'm not gonna mess with that hostess. You know, she uses sharp tones.” — Elliot Reid and John JD Dorian

9 “Nothing in this world, that's worth having comes easy.” — Bob Kelso

10 “Yeah, I'm not that great with kids. They've got such tiny hands. It's creepy.” — Elliot Reid

11 “I love this moment so much, I want to have sex with it.” — Perry Cox

12 “Oh, my God! I'm gagging and vomiting at the same time. I'm... I'm gavomiting!” — Perry Cox

13 “So he/she has a cute butt. Everyone has a cute butt. I have a cute butt.” “You should bring it in someday.” — John JD Dorian & Carla Espinosa

14 “The problem with people who only want what they can’t have is that once they have what they want, they don’t want it anymore.” — John JD Dorian

15 “I guess when you care about someone, you’ll do whatever you can to make ’em happy.” —John JD Dorian

16 “The truth is, it is all your memories, the joyful ones and the heartbreaking ones that make up who you are as a person” — John JD Dorian

17 “‘Cause even if it breaks your heart to be ‘just friends’, if you really care about someone, you’ll take the hit.“ — John JD Dorian

18 “The easiest way to lose something is to want it too badly.” — John JD Dorian

19 “Sometimes in life when you get what you want, you end up missing what you left behind.” — John JD Dorian

20 “Sex is only good for two things. Making babies and revenge.” — Jordan Sullivan

21 “What's going on?” “I love you too dumpling, but I have to work late. I'll make it up to you this weekend.” “NAME’s on the phone with his/her mom/dad/parent, so we're taking five.” — Jordan Sullivan, Ted Buckland and Perry Cox

22 “By the way, NAME’s here but I'm not going to kiss and tell.” “Oh really? Cause I just got your text that said "bone city".” “Oh really? That came through?” — JD and Elliot

23 “You're gonna love it here, sport.” “Get out while you still can.” “Uh...” “Seriously, get out while you still can.” — Bob Kelso, Ted Buckland, and Keith Dudemeister

24 “Ted, what are you doing?” “I like to do stomach crunches after lunch.” “Ted, lunch was four hours ago.” “Yep, I wasted most of my Tuesday.” “It's Wednesday.” “Aw, man! I missed SHOW!” — John JD Dorian and Ted Buckland

25 “Well, it took a whole tube of gel, but I finally got my hair down.” “No one male or female ever cared, NAME.” — Ted Buckland and Perry Cox

26 “Thirsty, huh?” “Helps the tears taste less bitter.” “Cheers.” — John JD Dorian and Ted Buckland

27 “I have to get ready man. I want my date with NAME to be perfect. What do you think about a romantic horseback ride on the beach?” “Ooh, like you and I did for your birthday.” “Yeah but except this time with two horses.” — John JD Dorian and Turk

28 “I am wearing red. Should I not be wearing red around her?” “She's pregnant, she's not a bull.” — Elliot Reid and Turk

29 “This is why the headache didn't go away, it is actually pronounced 'analgesic', not 'ANALgesic'. The pills go into your mouth.” — Turk

30 [She/he sees NAME holding a beer] “What are you doing? [He/she threatens to open it] “You better not open that.” [He/she opens it] “Okay, you better not drink it.” [He/she takes a sip] “All right, You better not enjoy it.” [He/she expresses enjoyment, person A bitch slaps his/her beer] “Did you just bitch slap my beer?” “Are you calling me a bitch?” “Yes. Yes, I am!” — Carla and Turk

31 “Is there another guy on this planet who is that sensitive?” “Okay, let it out. I've got you. NAME has got you. Hold me tighter, a little too tight...There is a good spot.” — Turk and JD

32 person a “This plan is fool proof.” Person c “That is impossible. You two are involved.” Person c “We will see about that!” [Person a and c crash into each other as they try to walk away] — JD, Perry Cox and Turk

33 person a “I don't think we have anymore wine. NAME, can I have some of yours?” [Person C’s narration: I felt like NAME was starting to blame me for all of this.] [person b Spills his/ her wine in person c’s face) “I spilled mine too, honey. You know what you should do? Ask for some NAME’s.” [Person C Spills his/her wine on his/her crotch] “I spilled mine too.” — Carla, Turk and JD

34 “Wait NAME! I have an idea.” “You have another idea? Well I've got to tell you, I'm done with your ideas and not just for now but forever! Okay, are we clear on that?”  “It's a good one.” “I'm listening.” — JD and Turk

35 “He/she is not allowed to dream about me. It gets too freaky in there.” “Cirque de Soleil freaky. One time, he/she was skinless.” — Carla and Turk

36 “How often do you make love?” “Twice today.” “Actually it was three times. You were asleep for the last one.” “Wow, that really happened? I thought it was weird that you were in one of my sex dreams.” — Marston, Turk and Carla

37 “How was your first stress-free day?” “Horrible. And you?” “Worse. Let's make a baby. If it doesn't work this time I'll kill myself.” “Not helping with the stress.” — Carla and Turk

38 “Dude, there you are. Two things; First, the aliens are here and they're wearing track suits.” “Oh, that's Nana.” — Turk and JD

39 “Are you nude right now?” “Yeah! How'd you know?” “Your voice is always higher when you're nude.” “That's true.” “It's not weird you know that at all.” —JD, Turk and Perry Cox

40 “You know, I actually like NAME. So, don't do that thing you always do.” “If you're referring to the game "Find the Saltine", relax. I don't even play that with NAME anymore.” [Later] “Behind your ear.” [Withdrawing Saltine from behind his ear] “My friend, you have found the Saltine. Uh, but, don't tell NAME we're still playing.”— Elliot Reid, JD and Turk

41 “Dude, he/she keeps a hug schedule with his/her friends!” “Okay, NAME ... looks like someone's getting crossed off their 2 o' clock spot and getting penciled in for never! How does that feel? Does it sting?” Person B Narration: He's hurting! Hug him/her ... hug him/her now! — Turk and JD

42 “Dude, don't sweat it - It says here that the ostrich is generally a docile creature.” “Thank God!” “It also says their kick can kill a man!” — Turk and JD

43 “Just don't repeat the same mistakes you made with me. For instance, don't speed down the road pretending your brakes are out. I don't care if it got you laid once in high school. It is not funny and I still have not forgiven you for killing that pony.” — Elliot Reid

44 “NAME, I don't photograph well. On my driver's license, I look like Gary Busey.” — Elliot Reid

45 “We have a very complicated past.” “Yeah, I hurt him/her, and I'm not proud.” Person B narration: I'm a little proud. — Elliot and JD

46 “NAME and I keep it superficial.” “Love the superficial. Dynamite teeth today!” “Oh thanks buddy!” “Sparkly.” “Yeah!” — Elliot and JD

47 “Will you tell me what NAME’s fantasy was?” “Nope.” “Did it involve chains?” “No.” “Whips?” “Mm-mm.” “Candle wax?” “No.” “Role-playing?” “No.” “Lasers?” “Mm-mm.” “Hamsters?” “Negative.” “Was he/she a Mexican apple thief?” “If only ...” — JD and Elliot

48 “Why don't you just move into my place?” “Oh, great, then we'll be two losers under one roof.” — Elliot and JD

49 “NAME, what you said before ... I knew you were right. Anyway, I'm sorry I got mad. You were wrong about one thing, though - we are moving forward.” “NAME, I'm thirty years old; I'm single, I'm homeless, and I'm pretty sure I just soiled myself.”

— Elliot and JD

50 Person A “Ohhh, my God, you're right.” Person B “Don't let him/her be your puppet-master.” Person C “Hey!” Person B “Hey.” Person C “What's up?” Person B “I have a headache.” Person C “Take some aspirin.” Person B “Don't tell me what to do! You're not the boss of me!” — Carla, Elliot and Jake

51 “I've never connected with a guy/girl like this before. I mean, even though it's only been two weeks, I already feel like I know NAME better than I know myself.” “What does he/she do for a living?” “I should know that.” — Elliot and Carla

52 “Look, the reason I've been acting so weird and having my friends hang around us all the time is because I really think that we have a shot for something great, and I don't wanna go and ruin it by sleeping with you too fast. I mean, what was I supposed to do?” “Well, you...you could have just told me that.” “Yes, but you're forgetting I'm a crazy person!” — Elliot and Jake

53 “I've seen the Wiggles live in concert ... twice.” “Did they perform 'Big Red Car'?” “They opened and closed the show with it. It was awesome.” — Perry Cox and Turk

54 “What's wrong with me?” “You're an annoying, whining man-child.” “That question wasn't directed to you!” “What question?” — JD and Perry Cox

55 “I’m notifying all my old boyfriends/girlfriends today that I'm officially off the market.” “I'm sure the 'pulse' setting on your shower head will be devastated!” — Elliot Reid and Perry Cox

56 “If there is one thing I have learned, it's that you can't schedule love.” “I think your credit card statement would beg to differ.” — Bob Kelso and Perry Cox

57 “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present, Man/Woman Not Caring.” [points to self] — Perry Cox

58 “If you're worried about people seeing your ass, do what all the other girls do and tie a sweater around your waist.” — Perry Cox

59 “Should I talk slower or get a nurse that speaks fluent moron?” — Perry Cox

60 “Do you actually listen to yourself when you speak, or do you find you drift in and out?” — Perry Cox

61 [thinking] Why don't I ever listen to me? — JD

62 “And you know what else? I quit!” “No you don't!” “Well I'm leaving early today!” “No, you're not! You're coming back to my office to do busy work!” “Fine, but I'm getting a soda first!” “Whatever.” — Ted Buckland and Bob Kelso

63 “Your dog is creepy.” “Aww...be nice to Rowdy. The guy we bought him from used to keep him in a box full of old hats.” — Elliot and JD

64 “I thought we cared about each other ...” “Oh please, if you didn't want to sleep with me, you'd have done the same thing.” “Well, I'll tell you one thing, the last thing in the world I wanna do is sleep wit'cha now!” “Do me right here.” “Okay.” “See!” — JD and Elliot

65 “Huh! I put all those fliers up, and nobody wants me to live with them!” “Oh, come on, NAME. I'm sure you'll eventually find a roommate who's a... clean, non-smoking vegetarian that rinses the shower thoroughly after each usage.” “Oh, well, if you don't, it gets mildewy.” “You know, you should move in with my friend: Anal McLooney.” — Elliot and JD

66 “You know, I've been thinking a lot about us lately.” “Me too.” “God, you drive me crazy.” “Oh, you drive me crazy!” “Sometimes I just lay awake at night, thinking about how unbelievably lucky I am to have you in my life.” “Sometimes you're so controlling it makes me want to strangle you..” — Paul and Elliot

67 “Tonight, I am going to make all of your fantasies come true.” “You know, NAME, I would be happy just to have sex above the covers once.” “Yeah ... never gonna happen.” — Elliot and Paul

68 “You know, it's funny... when I said "I love you," it was an accident - and I never really loved you at all.” “That is an absolute riot.” — Elliot and Paul

69 “Okay, here's what you do: First you say that, even though our relationship is ending, you don't have any regrets.” “Oh, my God! Are you actually telling me how to break up with you?” “You're right. Go ahead.” “If you could just start me off, that'd be super.” — Paul and Elliot

70 Person A “You never explained that U2 thing, did you!” Person B “You know, I've been thinking about it, and maybe it's not such a bad thing that that happened! Right? I mean, things have been going really well between us, and maybe it was fate! I could've been looking at my Bel Biv Devoe CD and said, "I love Bel Biv Devoe" - which I do, by the way. And I'm not ashamed of it.” Person A and B “That girl is poison..." Person A “NAME, look, I just think that if you guys are meant to get to this point, it'll happen... naturally.” Person B “You're right! "I love U2!" Dammit! Why do I always have to say every little thing that comes into my head!? Ugh, I really wish you wouldn't stand so close to me after you take your hummus break. See! I didn't need to say that! I'm gonna tell him.” Person C “Love you!” Person B “Love you more!” Person A “Ugh!” Person B “You know what - brush your teeth, then judge me!” — Carla, Elliot and Paul

#scrubs prompts #dialogue prompts #writing prompts #drabble prompts #scrubs quotes #john jd dorian #christopher turk #carla espinosa #perry cox #bob kelso #ted buckland #elliot reid #long post

[edsspoonie]

#myEDSchallenge May is Ehlers-Diablo’s Syndrome awareness month. I’ve written out my story below. It’s probably way more than you ever wanted to know about me,😂 but I wanted to share for awareness sake.

Approximately 1500 words

What Chronic Illness with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Looks Like for Me

Pat Berryhill

I wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my early 40’s but I always knew something felt “off” with my health and energy levels in comparison to others.

I hated Physical Education in school and began to notice pain in my joints around Jr. High School. I requested “sitting out” (later just not dressing for gym class at all) starting in 8th grade. I’d notice ankle and knee pain on a regular basis and especially with sports during class. Volleyball killed my hands and wrists. I ended up passing Physical Education with a D (One step above failing) because of it. This trend continued through graduation.

As I grew older and began to attend college, my book bag would cause uncommon pain in my back and shoulders. I began to experience migraines and just a general feeling of malaise. I had a lot of issues with my mental health, as well, and was diagnosed with bipolar II. The issues continued until age 31, when I had to have a hysterectomy due to exacerbated pain and blood loss. I had already given birth to my two daughters, so there weren’t any issues about fertility, although I had an ectopic pregnancy and an additional miscarriage between my kids. I was diagnosed, as a young mother in my 30’s and found it tough to keep up on housework. I just didn’t have the energy and the pain was steadily increasing.

I went back to school and got my Medical Laboratory Technician Associates degree in Laboratory Science and began working for a large medical organization in their freestanding Emergency room. I loved my job and was proud of myself for overcoming my issues enough to go back to work. I had been on disability from age 31 after my bipolar diagnosis and having had 17 jobs from age 16-30. I would work awhile, have pain, fail at a job because my performance would drop. I only got fired twice. Mostly, I quit to find something “better suited” for me and the cycle would continue.

But as an MLT, all was well. I loved my job and by then, I had begun taking prescriptions for my pain. So, I was happy. When I started having issues remember how to run quality control test and maintenance, I thought it was simple brain fog. I couldn’t remember anything, I was scared of hurting someone if I didn’t do the blood work tests correctly because of potentially missing a step or improper documentation. I attributed it to my fibromyalgia. In reality, I’d had a small stroke in the area of the brain that holds and retrieves memories and deals with cognition. It doesn’t manifest physically like other strokes and is easy to miss.

After leaving my MLT job, I was devastated. I had been off of any psychiatric medication since before graduation. However, the stress from my problems at work caused a resurfacing of my bipolar symptoms and I took a leave of absence which turned to a permanent one. This returned me to my SSI supplementary disability income. I felt like a failire. After leaving my job, I decided I would return to college and get a BA in creative writing.

During college and immediately after graduation, I began a literary magazine called ”Wraith Infirmity Muses” online (no longer available). It was here an “EDSer” introduced some of her writing and a book about her journey to diagnosis. It was like reading my own medical chart. I took it to my primary care physician who made me an appointment with a geneticist who said I fell one point shy of diagnosis because no one in my family had been diagnosed.

Since then, my daughters have taken steps to seek diagnosis due to surfacing pain and subluxations they have experienced since childhood and are progressing. My oldest now has her diagnosis. When I see the geneticist again (my appointment is 2 YEARS out due to lack of doctors in the field), I will update my diagnosis from HSD to EDS and be typed, (I hope).

I have multiple issues that stem from my EDS. Muscle spasms where they struggle to try to hold together my sublexing joints. I have had radial ablation on my neck and am about to have it on my lower back. My ankles, feet, shoulders, wrists, and hands are the source of most of my pain beyond my back, hips, and neck. I used a cane for years, but have since upgraded to a wheelchair to increase my independence. I have issues with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It makes me pass out sometimes. I’ve learned this with my heart arythmia and lack of coordination comes from dysautonomia. Another symptom is anxiety. You cannot regulate that “fight vs. flight” system. I’ve always had major anxiety (even more so during this tune of the pandemic) and at times I’ve even struggled with agoraphobia, a fear of leaving home. I sometimes fear being out and being in pain or sick and unable to get back home, whether that looks like an inability to drive or out with someone else that determines the timeframe of the day.

Lipomas and cysts are littered throughout my body. I deal with the discomfort and embarrassment of eczema on my scalp and face. My hair comes out by handfuls when I wash it and I style it parted on the side. I’m constantly wearing wide headbands and hats. I take high doses of antihistamines for an overactive immune response called Mast Cell Disorder.

I’ve had several blood clots, including one in my lung and a Cerebral Veinous Sinus Thrombosis which is rare. It went from the sinus cavity in the brain (that drains blood back into the body from your brain) down into my juggler vein in my neck. It remains partially present to this day and has scared the area. I have to have imaging done periodically and every headache I get makes me nervous it's coming back. Most are discovered on the autopsy table.

I have an idiopathic blood clotting disorder I take blood thinners for, daily. Managing my levels at an even keel is difficult with my issues. I must take a high dose to be effective and sometimes have to give myself shot of another type of blood thinner when biweekly tests show it is too thick. They cause huge bruises and pain. If it is too thin, I have to watch for blood in my urine and bowel movements. I've had numerous tests done to find the cause and it cannot be found.

I have irritable bowel syndrome and I am now having gallbladder issues and am looking at a surgery in the near future to remove it. . I use a CPAP machine to sleep at night because stretchy tissues make me stop breathing 20-40 times an hour without it.

I own multiple braces including a hard neck collar, knee, ankles, wrists, and finger braces. I also have had to integrate slings when my shoulders are bad. I sometimes use athletic tape to support my joints. I sleep on 5-6 inches of memory foam and use 6 pillows when I sleep to get situated in a position that will account for the least amount of time with my hearing pad for my back the next morning and hope none of my joints dislocate in my sleep.

I’m unsure how my health will be affected from this point on, but I’ve been blessed with many zebra friends within the EDS Facebook support groups that help me not feel like a hypochondriac and support for when I visit a doctor that treats me like one. I hope to go to a conference or in person support group maybe this year.

It's a lot and the sheer magnitude if of it along with managing doctors, testing, and surgeries gets really heavy. I often feel useless, ostracized, and invisible. I try not to complain too much and continue to do what I am capable of and sdapting the things I am incapable of to make it work for me. I am fortunate to have a loving and supportive husband, mother, and kids. I worry, at times, my husband will get tired if it all and leave someday even though he assures me he is much to in love with my brain for that to ever occur. There are daily encumbrances that make life painful and clumsy. There is always some new system brewing beneath the surface. I know this from the trajectory my illness has taken so far. I haven't even touched on side effects of medications and managing those. I am dependant on Lyrica. After taking it for three or more years, I've decided to wean off if it due to side effects and a tolerance I've developed that makes it ineffective for my pain. It will take me months to step down my dose little by little to avoid withdrawals that match those from people dependent or addicted to Benzodiazepines.

All in all, I agree with my oldest daughter who says her ”meat sack sucks”, but we have a deep appreciation and love for life, music, art, and mindfulness that I often wonder if I would have attained without my Ehlers-Danlos. At the end of the day, it's good to be me.

#chronically ill #zebrastrong #spoonie #dysautonomia #posturaltachycardiasyndrome #irritable bowel syndrome #gall bladder #chronic panic #folowforfolow

[guessimaclotpole]

If someone told me this time last year that I would have done the many things I have in 2018, I would have genuinely laughed off my female presenting nips.

Well, I guess 2018 was a bizzare little year full of wonderful moments and not so wonderful challenges. There have been missed opportunities which I have kicked myself for, and there have been things I have had to give up because of my health, but the good outweighs the bad.

I passed my PGCE after months of stress with the amazing help of those around me and we started working on getting the house the way we want it to look. I had an incredible summer which involved spending time with my friends and family and having lovely days out. I also got to go to York to see one of my favourite actors in a Shakespearean theatre.

I somehow managed to secure a place on a masters degree despite thinking I was incapable of such a level of critical thinking and I've had a lovely little few months celebrating my son's birthday and Christmas. I have made new friends, learned new things, got three new tattoos, a new piercing and to be honest, I think this is the first year, despite all that has gone sideways, that I can look back and say 'Actually, it wasn't really all that bad.'

Now it's New Year's Eve, and I've spent the last 36 hours or so in and out of sleep, vomiting and full of headache, but yanar what, at least I wasn't poorly on Christmas day for a change.

So here we are, and I'm making a post on tumblr and about to dedicate it to some wonderful friends. Back when Merlin was first aired on TV, a family member of mine watched it and I sort of tapped into bits and pieces and made a mental note to watch it. Then after something absolutely horrific happened to me in June, I was flicking through Netflix and there it was, forgotten about after 6 years.

I deleted my old tumblr back in 2013 and I found myself desperate to make an account again. I came across fanfiction, and more surprisingly I started writing my own. I also started drawing again, something which I never ever saw happening.

Not only is this because of the shoe itself, but because of an incredible group of friends. When I joined this site and tried to find my feet, @iamcaledonia became my first Fandom friend and what a friend she is. I have spoken to you about personal things, Fandom things, writing things, and I am grateful for it all. You have been wonderful to me and I don't ever intend on stopping reading your wonderful fics.

@das-alien-vom-planeten-wooh has become an invaluable part of my life. I don't think there has actually been a fully day where we haven't spoke to each other and I genuinely can not wait to meet you in May. Our Colin awaits!

I also want to shout out the absolutely amazing folk who welcomes me to Chatzy and who I consider to be the most wonderful of friends. I won't tag you all because I doubt tumblr will let me, but Plu, Fifty, Heather, Sparks, Devon, Polo, Elv, Venti, Sarah, Gabby, Moth, MK, AP, Nebula, Mist, Mathi, Lao, Cam, Wasp, Isaac, Penn, Aeris, Pecs, Raven, Lin, LFB, Merls and all of you who come and go and do the rewatch. I owe all of you so very much and I am ever grateful for your friendship. You guys have given me confidence and happiness and a time when I so badly needed it so thank you thank you thank you. ❤️❤️❤️

So here's to a 2019 that will (hopefully) be full of learning newer things, reading more books, writing more fic, creating more music, doing more decorating and just generally enjoying life. Now if we could just have a summer like last year's that'd be fab. 👌🌞

#New year new post #Sorry not sorry #I had to

[garethito]

You know... I've been meaning to ask you about this for a while, and yesterday's tag thing that you did with those Bale gifs only like... fueled? My curiosity? Lol, if that makes sense. Could you like... relive? The Champions League final from this year for us? Like, your perspective on it? Or maybe even the actual whole day of the final? Sorry, God, I know this is weird, but I just love how you tell stories from your life! I have seen you do it with some other anons once!

First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for this like, you guys always send me such interesting questions and Im so??? and OMG no this is not weird stop this is such a wonderful question to ask!! And omg you liked how I told the stories to those anons that is so sweet thank you so muchhhhh ❤️❤️💝❤️💘💘💞💞💘

But also this is making me really emotional I dont think I will be able to write this without tearing up but here we go!!! I was at school today and we had a special day so we didnt make any classes, so I had time to formulate an answer to this, and to complete it at home 💞

Quick WARNING?? Yes I am perfectly aware of how crazy and overdramatic this whole story sounds, but the thing is that this is how I truly feel about this day in my life. So yeah lol. Football is basically my life!

I would like to start this by saying that the day of the 26th of May 2018 is the most important day of my entire life as a football fan. There is nothing that could even come close to this. Absolutely nothing. Never in my life have I cried like in that night. Never. Absolutely never. I have looked at my life as a person, at my hardest times, when I cried a lot, but not even that can even slightly compare to the amount of crying that I have done on that glorious day of May 7 months ago. When I say crying, though, I dont actually mean crying, no. I mean violently sobbing, screaming at the top of my lungs, shaking and feeling numb. But in the best way possible, the happiest tears that I ever shedded.

My actual perspective, like you said, though, starts from the 2nd of May, a day after our semi-final second leg against Bayern. From that day, until the 26th, my mind, my body, my soul only thought about the final. I could not even focus on the Clasico on the 6th, neither on the last La Liga match. I was so fucking nervous, words are not sufficient to describe….. At least once every 2-3 days I would go to the bathroom with severe stomach aches and sit there until I would try to calm myself down so that my grandmother wouldnt get worried. I thank God, the Universe, or whoever you think invented life for the fact that highschool had nothing special during that period, just a few tests, that I got the best grades on, because had there been something big, I would have surely failed. That was a nightmare. Just think about it. Horrible La Liga season, then those fucking shaky as fuck second leg matches against Juve AND Bayern. I was literally so pessimistic that I am scaring myself right now thinking about it. All these bad scenarios played through my head ”What if Zizou loses his job? What if this will be the start of our downfall? What if this is the last Champions League final we will play? What if, what if, what if….”. I always tried to tell my brain how stupid I was, that we are Real Madrid and that we will win, like we always do, that we are the best fucking team in the Universe and that nobody even comes close to being like us. But its like these voices in my head wouldnt stop, it was so scary.

Come 25th of May I was an actual lifeless corpse. No matter how much I tried to call my best friend, who was in Bulgaria at that time, and telling her that I cant take this anymore, and her telling me that its going to be okay like it always is, that she doesnt really know my team well but she knows we will win, no matter how much of that was happening, I couldnt fucking stop being nervous and constantly thinking about this match.

On the morning of the 26th I woke up with a severe headache at about 8:30-9 AM. The only things that I remember from that whole day are the constant empty feeling, the amount of times I listened to Hala Madrid Y Nada Mas and the amount of pictures, videos, promotional/support videos I saw and watched. I called my friend one last time and I told her that now I am optimistic, that we will win.

My whole emotional state was ruined, however, by Gareth not starting. I dont need to explain the whole February-May Gaz-Zizou situation because I think everyone knows it too well by now and what I fucking felt about it. I have never been so enraged in my entire life. After all he has done, still no place in the starting XI. Though, this is pretty much the only thing that has ever angered me about Zizou. I love that man too much, I dont think there will ever be a coach that will ever come close to him, a coach that I will ever love as much as I loved him, but this whole situation really, really angered me. As I said, not going to get into details, I think that is enough. Though, I tried to only focus on my hardly achieved positivity about the match. 

The match started and my emotional state reached its lowest point. I couldnt take it anymore, I felt impossibly sick from being so nervous, I got the most severe migraine ever, my eyes were literally about to pop out ugh again, remembering that gives me chills. Dani got injured, and I got angry again, because he didnt deserve it, the World Cup was literally about to start like God give this man a break!!!

Halftime at 0-0, my optimism grew, believe it or not. I felt like we will have more urgency in the second half and that we will win this.

The second half came, with me just desperately hoping for a goal. Because we were playing so well, we deserved a reward!! And it did come, with Benzemas goal, God I felt so relieved and happy. I have seen people saying that his goal was not good but? You literally take everything that is being offered to you in a Champions League final! He scored, he gave us a goal, we were 1-0 up, and I was literally screaming from joy, I was shaking so much and I was the proudest person alive. God, I love my team. Then, Liverpools equalizer came. I didnt think anything of it. I wouldnt get rid of my optimism. I was looking at my boys and I knew we would win.

And Oh My God, here we fucking go. 

Minute 61. Gareth comes on. I was so grateful that he at least got to play 30 minutes, I literally only wanted to see him. At that time, considering everything that was happening, I was already emotionally starting to prepare for his departure to another team. I was watching him in those moments, flashbacks through my mind of all the glorious times I got to see him, all of his goals, everything.

And then…

All of a sudden…

62:58

That moment. The moment in which my soul has definitely left my body. The most beautiful moment I have ever lived in watching football. The moment in which I was the proudest person alive. A moment I will never, ever, ever forget, for as long as I get to live. The moment I have literally seen history being made, right before my eyes. The moment in which I literally evaporated, left the Earth, idk how to explain this but I hope you understand me. My idol, that had suffered so much that season, scored a fucking bicycle kick in a FUCKING UCL FINAL. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. The happiest, most full of joy, best, most emotional moment. Ever. No exaggeration.

My perspective on this? Oh well, brace yourselves. If you think everything that I have written so far seems insane, get ready for this.

I was on my bed, watching the game, shaking. I saw the passes, beautiful passes, that ended up with Marcelo controling the ball (incredibly, as he always does, my Brazilian sunshine). I saw him swaying to the side, and then passing a high, aerial ball in the box. Gareth came up to meet it, with… a scissor kick. That he scored. I literally fucking exploded like there is no other word. I jumped off my fucking bed and I ran literally across the house and came back, making the most inhuman noises ever I swear. I came back to my bedroom and I collapsed on the floor and I literally started fucking bawling my eyes out, and even that seems like an understatement. Screaming at the top of my lungs, bawling my eyes out, literally all of it happening on the floor. My grandmother literally came in and she thought something happened to me, but then I just pointed to the screen and she understood lmao. And from that point onward I cannot say anything anymore, because I dont remember anything else but me on the floor, literally. After like 15 minutes I hardly even managed to get back on the bed, and guess what?

82:41

AGAIN. 

A

G

A

I

N

???? I dont know what to say anymore. Like he literally toyed with everyone that night, he didnt care about anything. Again, with a pass from Marcelo, he literally goes from FAR FAR FAR away and he shoots and… scores?? How much do you think my poor fragile self can handle? Like, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SAY TO THAT?? Except for bawling your eyes out even more, if thats even possible? Its been 7 months and I still dont have words for what happened that night, like 2 goals ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? LIKE DO YOU UNDERSTAND I WAS LITERALLY DEAD LIKE ??? I LOST EVERY SINGLE BIT OF MY SANITY THAT NIGHT. 2 goals, 2 goals in 20 minutes, he was about to get a fucking hattrick. A fucking HATTRICK IN HALF AN HOUR, but Karius unfortunately stopped that shot.

The match ended and… I dont remember anything other than barely seeing the screen, I literally had a blurred vision.

We fucking won it. We DID IT. THE DECIMOTERCERA WAS OURS.

In the moment in which Sergio lifted it I… I dont have words, did I go into another Universe, did I ascend, did my soul leave my body I dont even know but what I do know is that I spent the rest of the night, up until like 6AM, crying my heart out. And this is what I mean by ”I have never cried so much in my entire life”. Like I have never spent a whole night crying.

I went to bed at like 6:30, woke up at like.. 10?? I think you can imagine how I woke up, I literally felt like I was going to die but I spent the rest of the day catching up on everything that happened the entire night.

And then, of course, the celebrations, Cibeles, Bernabeu… of course your sensitive girl bawled her eyes out again lol!

Every day ever since it happened, I have always been thinking about this day. About all of it. No point in counting how many times I rewatched the goals lol! But I think you can imagine haha 💘

So yeah, this is pretty much it DSLKFDKJFKDFJKDFK. The story about my best ever day of watching football I made it unecessarily long (Im so sorry). I think the only conclusion that I can get from this is Hala Madrid Y Gareth Y Nada Mas lol! 💘💘

#asks #Anonymous #gareth bale #real madrid