#like not to go full boomer but that shit has poisoned the minds of 2 entire generations and it is so scary to watch

[artificialqueens]

Green-Eyed Monsters and Other Demons (Branjie) -- athena2

A/N: This is a continuation of my vampire verse, based on a prompt from @gradtones, who requested a fic with a jealous ex of Brooke’s. I was so happy to write in this verse again, even if it took me a while to get back into it. (Part 1 Here and Part 2 Here). With that said, three thousand thank you’s to Writ. This fic was a bit of a trainwreck when it started, but you helped me see how to fix it. I don’t think I could’ve finished this without your help.

Please leave some feedback if you’d like, I really appreciate it!

*This does have some minor injury and mentions/descriptions of an unhealthy past relationship*

—

Brooke never thought she’d have one date with a vampire, let alone three whole months of them. But then again, most things with Vanessa are different from what she thought they’d be like.

She never thought she’d be able to tolerate the sheer chaos of Vanessa’s apartment, not even batting an eyelash when one of her roommates runs through the kitchen carrying a frog wearing a plastic crown. She never thought she’d have someone to laugh at movies with, someone to share a bed with. And she never thought she’d be in a thrift shop helping Vanessa find the single strangest item in the store to win a game with her roommates.

“How about these?” Brooke holds up a pair of Shrek slippers.

Vanessa snatches the slippers and holds them to her chest. “These ain’t weird, Brooke, these are a treasure. I’m wearing these in bed tonight.”

“Christ.”

They continue to browse through the store, Vanessa rambling about her day. Even when Brooke can’t see Vanessa, she knows she’s there, not just because of her loud volume but also because of the presence she has, calming Brooke all the while.

Vanessa squeals across the store, and Brooke goes running.

“We got it, Brooke! Let’s see Yvie and her mug of Captain Hook and Peter Pan making out beat this.”

Brooke has to blink several times just to take in the hand-sewn sweater vest with grainy tigers all over the fabric.

“Okay, that’s gotta win. I wish I could burn my eyes out after seeing that,” Brooke says.

Vanessa buys the vest and the slippers Brooke regrets showing her. Brooke’s heart nearly stops when she sees the woman walking in.

Shit. Shit. She needs to hide, she needs to—

“Brooke?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

Brooke forces herself to look at the black hair and cold eyes of the woman she used to let kiss her. Brooke wishes she could scrub those touches off her skin, wipe every memory from her mind.

“How are you?” Brooke is sure she’s not asking because she cares, but because she wants to see if Brooke is suffering without her.

“Fine.”

“Is that your girlfriend?”

Shit.

Though the sheer fact of having Vanessa as her girlfriend makes Brooke want to explode with happiness, she doesn’t want the two of them seeing each other. Vanessa is kind and warm and happy and brings impossible joy to Brooke’s life. Brooke doesn’t want Vanessa seeing the woman who had been a storm cloud over Brooke for months, who sucked all the joy out of her. She doesn’t want Amy poisoning Vanessa too. Brooke doesn’t need the woman she loves more than anything meeting them woman who had never loved her in the first place.

There’s also the issue of keeping Vanessa safe. Amy can recognize the signs of a vampire just as well as Brooke, and she can’t let anything happen to Vanessa.

“She is.”

“Brooke, let’s go, we gotta go home and have our Marvel marathon,” Vanessa says, bounding over to Brooke’s side.

“You still watch those baby movies?” Amy sneers.

Brooke stiffens, heat running up her neck, those words carrying an old embarrassment with them. Brooke knows there’s nothing wrong with the movies she likes, but it had always been like this with Amy, and it brings back doubts Brooke has pushed out the past two years, doubts making her question everything she likes, everything she does. It could be that cocky grin Amy has, the mocking tone always aimed at Brooke. Or maybe somehow, somewhere inside, Brooke still cares what Amy thinks, still wants to prove her wrong, that every mean thing she ever said to Brooke was wrong.

She feels Vanessa’s body tense, her hand closing around Brooke’s wrist in comfort. Brooke’s not sure which one of them she’s comforting, and it’s another reason she didn’t want Vanessa to meet Amy. She doesn’t want Vanessa to see how upset Amy makes her, doesn’t want to dig up old wounds. She knows she’s not, but she doesn’t want to seem weak in front of Vanessa, sweating just because of her ex-girlfriend.

“Who exactly are you?” Vanessa demands. Her usual charm and humor have gone out the window, replaced with a frigid bite in her words, stance defensive. “Besides someone with a bad perm that shoulda been left in the 70’s with those bootcut pants.”

“Let’s say Brooke and I used to be intimately acquainted.” She glares daggers at both of them.

Brooke finds herself shrinking under that glare, just like she used to. She remembers that glare when Amy would criticize her clothes, when she told her to stop worrying already, that she needed to get over things. How she acted so superior when Brooke got excited over superhero movies, said she needed to grow up or things were over. No. Brooke’s not doing this anymore. She stands tall, drawing back to her full height, delighting in being taller than Amy.

Brooke won’t feel bad for liking the movies she likes, for wanting to wear plain black clothes. She’s not letting Amy have that power over her anymore, not going to put on clothes that made her uncomfortable or try to act cool and uncaring like Amy, when Brooke just wanted to be excited and passionate.

She can sense Vanessa getting ready to launch herself across the store, legs bouncing with anger. As much as she’d like to let Vanessa loose, it’s better if they can just get out of here, let the whole thing fade, like it never happened.

“We need to go,” Brooke says quickly, almost pulling Vanessa out of the store, hoping she did it before Amy figures out what Vanessa is, before Vanessa gets suspicious of things.

She gets behind the wheel and finds that she hasn’t taken a complete breath since she saw Amy, air flooding for lungs as she erases Amy’s pointing fingers and mean smirks from her mind.

“Who was that?” Vanessa asks, and Brooke’s heart tenses. She hadn’t been quick enough, hadn’t hidden how upset she was, and now Vanessa knows something is up. She can read the tension in Brooke, her muscles tightening in familiar response to Amy’s voice.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Brooke—”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” It comes out harsher than she means it to, and she wishes she could take it back at Vanessa’s sad face, the pain in her eyes. She’s no better than Amy, making Vanessa feel like this, and it’s not something she wants anyone to experience.

“Okay, okay.”

Vanessa is quiet for the rest of the ride, and the silence is more painful than screaming.

When Brooke doesn’t sleep that night, she blames it on the Shrek slippers rubbing against her, but she knows that isn’t true.

—

It’s a quiet breakfast the next morning. Vanessa is never quiet, and it makes Brooke’s already-sore muscles clench even further.

“Are you okay?” Brooke asks, shifting in her chair. She gives up on eating, her appetite suddenly ruined.

“Me? I’m fine.” Vanessa stabs at her egg, eating without another word.

Brooke knows deep down it’s because of yesterday. She still regrets the way she snapped at Vanessa, the way she was distracted all night, unable to bring herself to cheer and laugh along with Vanessa during Captain Marvel. She wonders what Vanessa is thinking, if she’s still hurt from how Brooke had yelled, if she already has her own ideas on who Amy is and why she made Brooke act like that.

Brooke wonders if she should just tell Vanessa about her ex-girlfriend, about why the meeting in the thrift store made Brooke shut down and had ruined the whole night. But she doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it, doesn’t want to make anything of it, really. Brooke has been trying to forget her ex for two years now, and she doesn’t want to get back into it. It’s easier if she can let it stay buried, forget how Amy would embarrass her in front of their friends, how she made Brooke feel like nothing.

She just hopes things with Vanessa are okay. But judging from the vicious way she slurps her orange juice, they might need to talk soon.

Brooke’s mind is on another planet when she hunts that night, clutching her stake for dear life as she almost loses a few fights. She’s dropped down to hunting just three nights a week now, and it’s more of a stakeout, making sure no humans are in danger. Being with Vanessa has changed some of her views on vampires, but there are still bad ones out there, and Brooke has to keep people safe from them. She’s usually laser-focused, but she calls it quits early tonight.

Two vampires got away, and she winds up with a cut on her arm and more bruises than usual. She’s lucky it isn’t worse, considering how unfocused she is, how she can’t concentrate on anything other than her ex.

“Want me to do that?” Vanessa asks, appearing in the bathroom. She must have woken when Brooke knocked over the first aid kit in her struggle to bandage her right arm with her left hand.

“I got it.” Brooke has never asked for help. But it had never been offered to her, either. She’s always just dealt with injuries herself. She even knew how to give herself stitches. It’s her own fault she got hurt anyway, that’s what Amy always said.

“Let me do it,” Vanessa insists, taking the gauze out of Brooke’s hand. She’s calm and gentle, her coldness from the morning gone. “You lucky you got this antiseptic cream stuff. Back in my day, people just poured whiskey on it. Stung like a bitch. Come to think of it, they used whiskey for everything. Infection? Whiskey. Cold and flu? Whiskey.”

Brooke snorts as Vanessa spreads the cream on her arm. “You sound like a boomer.”

Vanessa swats her shoulder. “Hell, I remember when they started doing flu shots. Before that, you drank whiskey or you were shit outta luck.”

“Okay, boomer.” Brooke smiles as Vanessa wraps her arm up, and all she can think is that it’s 1am and Vanessa is up taking care of her, acting like it’s nothing, even after their tense breakfast. No one has ever done this for her, ever cared this much, Brooke often bandaging herself and popping a painkiller to numb her aching body before collapsing into bed alone. It’s a nice feeling, to be cared for, and maybe Brooke can get used to it. Maybe it’s okay to ask for help, to let someone else share the burden.

“Thank you,” Brooke says, placing her hand on Vanessa’s arm in the hopes it shows how much this means to Brooke.

“Yeah, of course,” Vanessa says nonchalantly. “You need anything else?”

Brooke shakes her head. “Just sleep.”

Vanessa’s hands make their way to Brooke’s shoulders after Brooke sinks into the mattress with a groan. Her cool hands rub away the tension Brooke has been carrying since she was 18, worsened now with the words she can’t say to Vanessa, words that make her burn with anger.

“You sure you’re okay, baby?” Vanessa asks in worry. “Your muscles are really tight.”

“M’fine,” Brooke mumbles, Vanessa’s touch bringing on a calm sense of peace that inches Brooke towards sleep.

Vanessa presses a soft kiss to her neck. “Sleep. You need it.”

Brooke is asleep before Vanessa’s lips leave her skin.

—

A few weeks pass, and Vanessa doesn’t bring up that day in the thrift store again, so Brooke leaves it alone. There’s definitely something unspoken between them, some sort of chill or pointed stare whenever they look at the vest Vanessa bought. Vanessa cancels on two dates at the last minute, and her touches seem hesitant, kisses reluctant. But they’re managing.

Brooke is hoping things are fine, despite the unease she’s felt, the way she’s been doubting whether she’s good enough every time she looks in the mirror. But she’s managing. She hasn’t seen her ex in two years, and maybe it was just a one-time thing. Nothing to worry about.

Until Brooke’s hunt–though it’s more of a patrol now, really, watching from the trees to make sure no vampires attack a group of teenagers having a party in the woods.

Her body has been grateful for the lessened nights and decreased fighting. She even gets more sleep now with Vanessa in her bed, sometimes nine whole hours on her off nights. Vanessa makes the bed cozier with her presence, even when she kicks Brooke half the night, and even though she can’t sprawl out with her long limbs everywhere anymore, she loves getting to see Vanessa first thing in the morning.

This is her last patrol of the week, and she’s about to pack up when a flicker of movement in the woods draws her attention. Brooke inches toward the trees, crossbow ready.

“How the hell could you leave me for one of those monsters?” A person demands as they come out of the woods, and Brooke’s heart sinks as Amy appears.

“They have more of a heart than you do,” Brooke says quietly.

“Funny,” she snarls. “Brooke Lynn Hytes, Little Miss Rule-Follower, going out with a vampire? Do you know the trouble I could get you in?”

Brooke’s hand tightens on her bow, palms sweaty at the thought of any trouble not only for her, but for Vanessa as well. She’s never had another person to worry about, never had someone she would do anything to protect. Her heart clenches in fear, but it’s also comforting–powerful, even–to know she has someone she cares that much about.

“You can’t do anything,” Brooke says. “Or did you forget that the Guild kicked you out after–”

“Oh, fuck them. I can still hunt even without them backing me. And you know, I bet they’d take me back if I bring in the last of the Mateo clan.” She spits. “I’ll be on the lookout for Miss Mateo. She’s hard to miss, with that mouth.”

All Brooke can see is Vanessa being hurt, her smooth skin covered in blood, her loud laugh silenced. She thinks of Vanessa no longer curling around her in their bed, no longer taping up memes in her kitchen, no longer taking in stray dogs and helping them get homes or helping people get medical care. She thinks of the person she tried so long to get over, to forget, taking away the person who makes her life better, who gives Brooke the real love she is deserving of, and the anger explodes in her. Vanessa is too kind, too pure, and she doesn’t deserve even an ounce of pain.

Brooke slams Amy into a tree, rage blocking all out her senses. “If you even touch her, I swear–”

“Swear what?” she mocks. “You don’t harm humans, B.”

“I’ll make an exception,” she says fiercely. Her blood boils beneath her skin, body pulsing with the urge to tear apart whoever she needs to in order to keep Vanessa safe. “Stay away from her.” She shoves Amy on the ground, delighting in her wince.

“We’ll see,” she says before disappearing into the woods.

She has to warn Vanessa. Brooke’s heart is still pounding, mind racing with all the terrible things that could happen to Vanessa.

Brooke tears through the city to Vanessa’s apartment. Even through her fear, she smiles at the memory of Vanessa making fun of her slow driving on their first date and wonders what she would say now.

Brooke opens the door and immediately senses something wrong. There’s always some kind of noise in the house—Silky trying to sing, Yvie watching conspiracy videos on YouTube, A’keria and Vanessa blasting music. But it’s silent as a tomb, the air thick with disappointment, making the usually cheerful kitchen, with its bright memes and newly-added disco ball centerpiece on the table, seem eerie and wrong.

“Vanessa?” she calls, stepping inside with her hand tight around her stake, heart speeding back up just after she got it to calm down.

“You were with that woman again,” Vanessa says, and Brooke can hear the pain in her voice.

“Vanessa, please let me explain,” Brooke begins, heart breaking when Vanessa steps back from her.

“The game was tonight,” Vanessa says. “You never showed up, never answered your phone. And I can smell her on you.”

The thrift store game? That wasn’t tonight, Brooke knows it’s tomorrow, she had worked her hunting around it…no, it isSaturday, she realizes. She’s been mixing up days lately, even forgot one of her weapons hunting last week, her entire mind shaken like a snow globe since that day she saw Amy.

“I’m sorry, Ness, just please let me explain. Please,” she begs. She can’t lose Vanessa, she doesn’t want to see those tears in her eyes or that heartbroken look on her face. She doesn’t want Vanessa to be hurt, ever, and the fact that she’s the one hurting her almost brings tears to Brooke’s eyes.

“Do it,” Vanessa says, crossing her arms.

Brooke takes a deep breath, wondering where to start. “The woman you saw is my ex-girlfriend. She–”

“Are you still in love with her or something?” Vanessa demands, hands jabbing angrily. “Is that why you keep meeting her?”

“No. No. It’s nothing like that. Please,” she says, putting her stake back in its holster and raising her hands in surrender to Vanessa. “Please let me keep explaining.”

Vanessa nods.

“She’s my ex, but she…I don’t really know where to start. We were together for two months. I didn’t love her or anything. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if I really liked her. We never talked about personal stuff, or feelings or anything. I just…I never thought anyone would love me, so I went out with her.” Brooke looks down in shame at how she had been so desperate to have someone that she went out with an asshole who didn’t even like her. “I thought she cared about me, but she didn’t. I was the top hunter, and she wanted my status.”

Vanessa’s eyes widen, her expression softening.

Brooke bites her lip. “It was small stuff that tipped me off about how she felt. That tore us apart. She made fun of the movies I wanted to watch. She’d leave messes because she knew it bothered me. She’d say mean things about me in front of people, and I just pretended they were funny, but they weren’t.” She pauses, all the things she had moved past and forgotten coming back and hitting her in the face, her body burning with anger. Brooke can remember how small she felt, like she wasn’t worth anything, when Amy would tease her. “We always had to do what she wanted, and she wanted us both to be the top hunters. She was always pushing us to hunt more. We’d go every night, and I was exhausted and miserable, but I wanted to keep people safe. I thought that’s what she wanted too.”

“You don’t have to keep going,” Vanessa says, a soothing hand on her shoulder, any previous anger gone.

Brooke shakes her head. “I want to.” She takes another breath. “So, one night, we found this group of vampires in an old barn. Amy wanted to burn the place down to kill them, so we could get the glory. But I told her it was too risky, in case humans were inside. She said she didn’t care about them.”

Vanessa gasps, and Brooke nods grimly.

“She lit the place up even though I said not to, and the fire got out of control. But there was a kid inside. I could hear her screaming and I knew it was a human. So I went inside to get her. The barn collapsed, part of it fell on me, but I got the kid out okay.” Vanessa squeezes her shoulder. “I broke three ribs and had some lung damage. I was in the hospital for a week. I ended things with Amy, and she was kicked out of the Guild,” Brooke finishes.

Brooke can still recall that week, the scratchy hospital blanket, how each breath set her lungs on fire and made her wince, and the satisfaction when her shaking voice told Amy it was over. Then Amy walked out of the hospital room after trying to suck up some glory for herself, and Brooke realized she was relieved to be free of it all, relieved not to have to put up with Amy anymore and pretend things were fine in front of other people.

“Holy shit, Brooke,” Vanessa mutters. “You’re like a damn superhero.” She pulls Brooke into a hug, Brooke safe and secure in her arms. “I’m sorry she did that to you. And I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“It’s okay.” Brooke buries her face in the top of Vanessa’s head, breathing in her coconut shampoo. “I should’ve been honest with you from the start.”

“I just got really jealous when I saw you with her. But I get why you didn’t want to talk about it. And I love you, and I know you love me.”

“I love you too,” Brooke whispers. It’s their first I love you, and it’s just three words, but they warm Brooke’s whole body and cement Vanessa’s love in her, let her know she has someone who really does love her now. That she never has to live the way she used to again.

Vanessa stretches up and kisses her, soft and tender and real, nothing like the showy kisses with Amy.

Brooke pulls back with a gasp, remembering what she came here for. She can’t let Vanessa get hurt, she can’t. “Vanessa, you have to be careful. She’s mad at me for getting her kicked out, and she knows who you are, and–”

“Shh,” Vanessa soothes. “I’ll be fine. We’re both gonna be fine. Besides, I lived through polio and shit and two Bushes being President. I can survive anything.”

Brooke laughs, and she carries Vanessa to the bedroom, her mind finally clear at last, thoughts full of Vanessa.

—

Brooke can’t sleep that night, despite Vanessa’s reassurance that she ‘ain’t afraid of nobody with can-I-speak-to-the-manager-hair’. She keeps tossing and turning, shivering a little because Vanessa is a blanket hog. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees something horrible happening to Vanessa; a stake in her heart or arrow in her chest.

Brooke doesn’t want to risk having a nightmare. Sometimes she thrashes around when she has them, and she doesn’t want to wake Vanessa. Brooke had woken up, gasping and sweating, after nightmares about her parents once or twice with Amy. She had always been pissed, banishing Brooke to the couch so her sleep wouldn’t be interrupted.

Brooke shuffles to the living room instead, some sickly-sweet cotton candy scent almost burning a hole in her nose. She’s only been on the couch for 10 minutes when Vanessa comes in after her.

“Brooke? Why are you on the couch?”

She considers lying but knows Vanessa will see through her. “Couldn’t sleep. I was afraid I was gonna have a nightmare and I didn’t want to keep you up,” Brooke says, lowering her head in embarrassment.

But Vanessa just looks at her with a deep kindness that makes Brooke melt.

“Nightmares can suck. Believe me, I know. But you come back to bed right now, okay? I don’t care if you start fucking yodeling in your sleep, I ain’t letting you stay on the couch. ‘Specially after Silky over-sprayed her perfume in here yesterday. It’ll fuck up your sinuses.”

Brooke snorts and gratefully accepts. She knows Vanessa would never make her feel bad for something like that, would never get mad at Brooke for waking her up.

Vanessa’s arms hold her extra tight that night, holding Brooke together as she drifts off.

—

She and Vanessa sinks back into their rhythm of movie nights and another round of the thrift store game with her roommates, A’keria taking top prize for a figure of Jesus riding a dinosaur. Brooke is happy things are normal again, but she can’t quite relax, can’t stop looking over her shoulder every time they go out.

When she suggests staying instead of going out for the third night in a row, Vanessa puts her foot down.

“Baby, we can’t live in fear forever,” she says.

“I know, I just…I don’t want anything to happen to you. I can’t…” she trails off, her mind filling with images of Vanessa hurt again, while Brooke stands there, unable to help.

“Brooke,” Vanessa begins hesitantly, “I have an idea. It’ll keep us safe and get rid of your ex, but you’re not gonna like it.”

—

“This has to be the dumbest idea ever,” Brooke mutters, sitting down a bumpy log.

“That’s ‘cause you weren’t there when A’keria and Silky tried to ride down the stairs in a laundry basket,“ Vanessa retorts. “Yvie put little cardboard flames on the sides and everything.”

“The most shocking part of that statement is that the four of you actually own a laundry basket.”

Vanessa cackles loud enough to rustle the leaves.

“Quiet!” Brooke hisses. “Do you want someone to hear us?”

“That’s exactly what we want, baby, remember?”

Brooke sighs. “I still think this is too risky.”

“I know, but this is the best option–fuck!”

Brooke hears the arrow whiz past them both, swiping Vanessa’s arm and releasing a slow trickle of blood down her sleeve.

Brooke snaps up and throws herself in front of Vanessa, crossbow raised. An arrow lands in her thigh, Brooke hissing in pain, but she can’t feel it with her senses heightened, each thought only to protect Vanessa, stop anyone from hurting her.

Amy comes out of the shadows. “You must be losing your touch, B. Out in the open like this with that loudmouth.”

Brooke can feel Vanessa place a protective, calming hand on her back. “Don’t call me nicknames,” Brooke says, her finger on the bow-trigger. “You don’t get to call me anything after what you did.”

“After I set that barn on fire? Please. You’re the one that had to go save that dumb girl. It was your own fault.”

“I almost died!”

“Still your fault. Just leave them like I did. I’d still be in the Guild if you didn’t have to be a stupid hero.”

“You don’t deserve to be in the Guild,” Brooke says, trying to hide her nerves, waiting for Amy to take the bait dangling there.

“Neither do you, with the company you keep! I’ll show them. I’m gonna kill that vampire bitch of yours, and then I’ll be back in. And I can keep this dangling over your head, B, and I can do anything I want with you. Now, move, and let me kill your little girlfriend.”

Brooke steps back, Vanessa moving in unison with her. Amy follows, and Brooke holds her breath as she steps into place—

“What the hell?” The net swoops up from a tree and hoists her into the air.

“It worked,” Brooke mumbles. “It really worked.”

“I told you it would! You can’t doubt A’keria’s rope skills. I mean, she doesn’t usually use them for this–”

“We get it.” Brooke grins in relief, approaching the net to deliver the final blow.

“We have this on tape. You confessing to the fire, threatening me, threatening Vanessa, and blackmailing me,” Brooke begins. “Now you can leave and never come back. Or we release the records, and I let Vanessa get some revenge. She really wants it, as you can imagine.”

“I sure do.” Vanessa bares her fangs menacingly. “So you better leave and never bother me or Brooke again.”

Brooke grins as Amy realizes she’s caught, no way out of it. “Fine. But mark my words, B, you’ll get caught eventually. Even if it’s not by me.”

Vanessa slaps her across the face. “Girl, shut the fuck up. Your voice like nails on a chalkboard.”

They’re safe. They’re safe, and the enormous relief washes over Brooke, wiping out some of her adrenaline, and she groans as the throbbing pain in her thigh worsens.

“Let’s get you home, baby,” Vanessa says with worry. “Have fun gettin’ out of that net, bitch! It’s made of A’keria’s favorite sex knots.”

Brooke snorts, checking to make sure Vanessa is okay. Her wound has already stopped bleeding and Brooke breathes a little easier despite the arrow still stuck in her thigh. She eases into the passenger seat, taking a breath as Vanessa enters race car driving mode.

But she holds Vanessa’s hand over the console, quickly adjusting to the nauseating speed, and Brooke feels safe. Completely and utterly safe with someone she loves.

“I love you, Brooke,” Vanessa says.

“I love you too.”

Vanessa winks. “After we get your leg fixed up, if you’re up for it, maybe I’ll try out some of A’keria’s knots.”

Brooke’s heart skips a beat. “Oh, I’ll be up for it.”

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #lesbian au #vampire au #hurt/comfort #fluff #angst #athena2 #tw mild injury #tw unhealthy relationship #concrit welcome #submission

[moseswilhelm]

Now that you’re all gone, I’ve got a few squishy bits to air out. I don’t feel normal. Whether that means quirky or broken or eccentric depends on the day or hour or seconds between the particular anxiety of waiting on someone to respond to a long string of text. Internally, I’ve cycled between deciding if I am alien, demon, mutated evolution, a plaything of God, a challenge, or just plain old mentally ill. We can guess the healthier option, but there isn’t much use or fun using that.

Knowing you’ve lacked socialization in your youth doesn’t really mean much in trying to solve that problem in the same way that knowing you were just shot won’t help close the wound. What I am trying to say is I wasn’t socialized when I was young and that consistent distant feeling from your peers comes from that.  Hearing that you think differently, or have an interesting brain is a nice little compliment albeit a little condescending. Unfortunately, you can’t really monetize excellent explanatory metaphors without the true meat and potatoes of capitalist society: focus. Arguably, effort and hard work and all that, but the measurement of how much you’ve put into something gets a bit blurred when you’ve somehow acquired detail knowledge of the economic turmoil that initiated the Pontic Wars. Someone please give me money for that. Easily an entire week got a bit lost in trying to understand centralized economies in the classical era and not one person paid me. Outrageous. I think writing was my way of trying to accomplish that level of usefulness that we are all trying to achieve. I knew that whatever I went through as a kid helped me develop an approach to understanding things in a unique way, but this is arguably not even useful to myself let alone the world as a whole. Unfortunately this hobby/career is top tier ADD nightmares and require a level of focus and drive comparable to Stephen King just ripped on coke. I neither have the proclivity for weird child orgies and dog monsters or coke.  Well thats a lie, coke suits me just fine but my scantron has enough bubbles filled out and I’m already late turning in my “how much of a trainwreck are you” buzzfeed quiz.  I see you, red squiggly telling me that “thats” needs an apostrophe. Fuck off, this is art and I refuse to change. Hey, what do you think happens when you’re told that confidence has to come before... y’know... actually being proud of yourself? Arrogance and self-absorption, obviously. You learn very quick that empty confidence is just as meaningless as no confidence, so to kind of fake it you have to really inflate things you have no right inflating and they are inflated on a scale comparable to those around you. Which is arrogant! Its awful! People can do different things at different levels and still be valid! Confidence is valued at an extremely high level to the point where the confidence to present yourself is a bit more important than the character you are supposedly proud of... evidenced plenty by the folks in the public eye known specifically for their charisma and yet somehow failing to actually be a person worth being around. That said, it can get tangled up in actually being proud of yourself. Shocking, I know, but you can’t really lump people who have characters worth being proud of to those just decent at faking it.  Faking it. I know imposter syndrome is a thing. I am certainly not really alone in the concept of “oh god I’m faking it” so I won’t really pretend I have some magic insight on the concept (I’m lying I’m absolutely going to present myself as someone with Answers welcome to the fucking show) but when does “holding it together” and “how you present yourself” become imposter syndrome.  “Hi this is me who has to be this way in order to balance between seeming different enough to stand out but not so different that you feel disgusted at the concept of change, nice to meet you” I mean what the fuck is a person anyways. Thats not a question. Not even a rhetorical one so if you answered aloud in your head I’m sorry but my psyche is not emotionally prepared for audience participation right now so clam up. Finding yourself is always a precarious as hell phrase because that often means one of two things: 1. Learning not to care about how others feel about who you are, despite all evidence of existence point out that this is the absolute most important aspect of your life 2. Presenting the parts that you were afraid to present to people.  Look, I get it, you can’t please everyone and I’m not really here to talk about how to please anyone. In fact, I’m not even here. This is a lucid dream you’re having in your chair and shortly you’ll wake up and not remember if you were sleeping at all. Its fine, you’re fine.  You have to please someone though. I think we underestimate the value of the tutorial level of life regarding this. You are given a set amount of people who are, usually, just going to be pleased by your existence. This always sets up your expectations of how that looks, how it feels, and how important it is. I mean imagine if right now I decided to criticize the immense value society puts on children. You’d hate my fucking guts! “Look at this asshole, kids deserve to be cared for” To be clear I don’t disagree with that. I think a lot of the current “you are valid” rhetoric is based on the concept that adults deserve to be cared for as well. This sorta rounds off my point that attention and reassurance is an important part of being cared for. In my opinion, this gets overlooked very often in favor cheap performative actions like hitting a heart button and oh my god I’m like a baby boomer writing for the new york times okay hold on I promise this isn’t a cynical criticism of millennials.  People want to be heard. Importantly, people want to be understood. Spicy hot fucking take. Its a bit more than “this person knows who I am” although thats precisely how its framed. People want to be cared for, and this means knowing the... other person knows who they are caring for. Ah holy shit this is why I use metaphors.  You have a snickers bar and you are hungry. Congration, you done it. Its the middle of the day and you never had any breakfast and frankly your bank account could use a break from pleasuring Starbuck’s atm reader so you somehow found the last snickers bar in a box you bought off of impulse bought off of Amazon and immediately regretted because it was gone two days later. Or so you thought. As you threw away the cardboard you hear the tell-tale tumble of a forgotten rod of peanuts and caramel that must have gotten jammed in the back of this thing. It was, however, 7am and you had to get to work and maybe having bubbleguts while dealing with people is not your recipe for a good day so you throw it into your purse or bag or whatever the fuck and move on.  “Lunchtime” rolls around and as you do the mental gymnastics required to find the conclusion that food=energy in between bouts of fury over why your workday insists on starting at 8am and how you can’t seem to cope with falling asleep early enough for that not to matter, you remember your snickers bar. Reaching into whatever bag you put it and coming to the horrifying dread of realization that you left this bag in your car in fucking July, you find the sweet sugared respite in a corner. Squeezing it a bit just to test, you are surprised to not find it in the horrible (and yet delicious) state of melted confectionary. Your stomach grumbles a bit as you fidget with the perforated candy wrapper, vaguely thinking to yourself that it might be interesting to read the ingredients as you eat this thing like that isn’t going to fill you with inexplicable Eldritch dread. Nobody needs to know they are ingesting something that might have been made in a facility that also processes every other nut you can think of, delightfully shortened into “tree nuts”. I wonder if anyone has cross referenced all the allergen warnings to deduce which candies are made in the same factory, or if that information is just freely available. What if we kissed in the snickers production facility??? haha jk but...? Anyways, as your mind cycles through a list of stale memes you manage to unsheath this uncut chocolate delight from its wax(???) plastic prison and proceed to take your first, and arguably best, bite into this lunch.  Your teeth sink softly into it, as you would expect. In fact, expectations haven’t really filtered into your skull soup you call a brain, so all manner of things can just slip through your recognition. Not this, however. Instead, fireworks of electric signals screaming “BITTER POISON” shock your brain from its previous state of vaguely functioning. Now you truly see the color of light, feel the air cocooning your skin, the squirm of your organs in your belly. Full panic ensues. You are not human, you are animal, and you have taken in a poison thing.  You spit it out right there on your lap.  You stare at the sad and ruined chocolate mutant nestled grossly in between your legs as your brain high fives itself for saving your life before frantically scouring your subconscious for whatever Vine gives it enough dopamine to not just fucking kill yourself right here. What happened? The fugue of panic washes your perceptions with a mixture of justifications for this travesty. It probably just went bad, but that didn’t taste spoiled (you consider yourself a mild expert having scraped clean many an old collection of halloween candy collections in August the year after the fact) so maybe it melted and rehardened? Baking stuff is weird so maybe that broke down some of its components. You pick it up (holy shit that is slimy. Of course its slimy, just touch it) and its insides look fine. I mean, how often do you examine the insides of a partially chewed bite of snickers? No weird colors. The remaining chocolate lasagna brick also looks exactly what you’d thought it be.  You jokingly think to yourself that maybe you had a stroke but despite the apparent hilarity of that possibility you do the smile thing in the selfie camera of your phone. Everything seems fine, but now you’re getting mad that some turn of events has just ruined your perfectly good slab of sugar and fat that surely would have made the rest of the day bearable (and full of indigestion) Now that is a metaphor.