#mornings are the worst for chronic illness right next to nights

[pokemonispain]

waking up on the wrong side of the bed-Alhaitham/Kaveh

Summary:  In which the moment Kaveh wakes up he can tell that today is not his day.

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It's the aching in his joints and the sharp pain dancing along his skin, the jittery buzzing burn that sits just below his skin that lets Kaveh know that today just isn’t his day when he opens his eyes that morning.

He groans softly, grimacing at the dull ache that streaks across his eyes when the sunlight filtering in from between the curtains feels far too bright.

As Kaveh lies there hoping to drift back off to sleep he slowly becomes more and more aware of a few more things.

For one his head hurts, a slight dull ache settled at the base of his skull as well as his right temple. It’s not horrific but it definitely is slightly noticeable and annoying.

The next thing he notices is that his body feels heavy, especially in his limbs as if a small weight were tied to each.

There’s a slight ache in his stomach as well, not exactly painful but definitely uncomfortable, and he scowled as he shakily placed a hand on his stomach. His scowl only deepens when he finds that his stomach is bloated ever so slightly.

The final thing is the burning sting dancing across his skin, that make even the blankets laying across him feel uncomfortable.

It’s all these things alongside the jittery, almost feverish feeling settled in his body that lets Kaveh know that he’s having a flare-up.

Kaveh was someone who’d been chronically ill since he was a child although he did his best to hide it as he got older, especially when he was studying at the Akademiya.

This often meant him pushing through the pain, the horrible fevers, and nausea, no matter what whenever he was in class or around others, only to return to his dorm room and collapse in bed barely able to move.

Once in bed, he would reach out taking the sketchbook and pencil he kept on his nightstand, and simply sketch. Random doodles, impossible yet wondrous architecture that no human could reliably replicate.

Sketching random doodles like that was one of the few things that let him ignore the world around him.

More often than not he would fall asleep soon afterwards, his quill still clutched in his hand.

The illness wasn’t life-threatening truthfully but that didn’t stop Kaveh from feeling as if it were whenever the flare-ups were at their worst.

Not only that but alongside the regular symptoms Kaveh also often found himself susceptible to getting sick frequently which was rather annoying.

Honestly, he’d felt the oncoming signs of a flare-up all week, the slight nagging queasiness in his stomach that made quite a lot of food seem unappetizing.

The heaviness that lingered in his body each morning which he’d just chalked up to the work he’d been doing the night before.

The dull ache that had settled in his skull which he’d chalked up to eye strain.

Remembering the signs that he’d ignored and brushed off, Kaveh groans loudly his hands covering his face, “Idiot!”

A second later he scowls, pausing for a moment to try and listen intently in the hopes that Alhaitham hadn’t heard his near scream of frustration.

He’d been living with Alhaitham for a little while now, with the younger man extending the offer for Kaveh to live with him a while ago.

Although they’d been rather close during their time studying at the Akademiya together, despite the fact that they attended under different years and different

Darshans.

Kaveh was Alhaitham’s senior however the two had grown rather close forming something of an odd friendship, this friendship had drifted apart due to their differences, but eventually when they’d met once more later into their adulthood, and began living together.

They bickered and argued rather frequently, pushing each other’s buttons and responding in kind to the point where Kaveh wouldn’t have been surprised if all of Sumeru city were aware of it.

Alhaitham could often read Kaveh like an open book, something that the younger man used to his advantage to irritate Kaveh.

That is also why Kaveh often did his best to hide his illness thoroughly. The medications he often took to ease and calm the flare-ups were hidden in a lockbox in the lowest cabinet of the nightstand.

Admittedly Kaveh did occasionally overwork himself but it had been a while since he had a flare up thankfully. The last thing he wanted was for Alhaitham to find out about his illness for multiple reasons, the main one being Kaveh’s pride more than anything else.

Kaveh was someone who deeply valued his self-image, the way people saw him especially. He hated people pitying him like he was just some poor fool who didn’t know any better.

Having grown up the way he had, he had heard many comments such as this. Although it was in the Akaidemyia was where the hushed whispers were the worst, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have friends but even when the ‘eccentric weirdo’ became the genius and light of the Kshahrewar those hushed whispers never stopped.

Kaveh hated people pitying him, and although he knew when to swallow his pride when backed into a corner that didn’t make the feeling any less bitter. Hell, when Alhaitham had offered to allow him to move in with him it had taken a bit of contemplation.

It had been his only option at the time when he’d gotten into debt. The hushed whispers of people gossiping had seemed overbearing at that time.

Kaveh bites his lip lightly as his eyes glance over to his bedroom door nervously. The flare-up was annoying at the moment and slightly painful but the pain hadn’t reached crippling levels this time. Hopefully, he could keep Alhaitham from finding out until it passed.

Taking a deep breath Kaveh slowly sits up so that he can get ready for the day. Almost instantly a wave of dizziness washes over him at the movement, as the dull ache that had been throbbing in his skull seems to dart along the side of it.

Kaveh brings a hand to his head with a soft groan as he closes his eyes, his ears are filled with a loud ringing noise drowning out every other sound.

His other hand goes to his stomach when nausea stirs in the pit of it, still groaning and feeling as if the room is spinning around him he lightly rubs at his stomach noting the low growl that came from it.

Kaveh takes a few deep breaths through gritted teeth. Careful, all he had to do was be careful and maybe just maybe Alhaitham wouldn’t find out. It takes Kaveh a few deep breaths before he could open his eyes without feeling as if he were going to pass out.

It takes him another moment to shakily get to his feet, the normally soft sensation of shifting blankets feeling as if they were scraping against his too-sensitive skin.

His body feels far too slow and heavy as if filled with lead, each brush of clothing against his skin sending a sharp burning sting spiderwebbing across his body. When he’s finally finished getting dressed Kaveh feels worse than when he woke up.

Exhaustion covers him like a large blanket, tugging a yawn free from his lips. His head is pounding in time with his heartbeat, the sunlight filtering in through the curtains feeling as if it’s trying to stab him through the eye.

Kaveh feels uncomfortably warm as well as though he’d gotten a full workout from simply getting dressed. Each ragged breath he takes makes his chest and backache, that burn darting and dancing across the expanse of the skin there.

He feels a bit dizzy, the queasiness settled in his stomach becoming a bit more noticeable as if on cue he could hear the soft clang of pots and pans in the kitchen letting him know that Alhaitham was awake and fixing himself breakfast.

Tonight would be Kaveh’s turn to cook dinner, although they often switched this one specific chore due to Kaveh complaining that it was unfair that he should be stuck cooking each day for the two of them. Especially considering how messy Alhaitham already left the house.

Kaveh looked over towards his bed for a moment, he knows he should just climb back in bed and rest until this passed especially considering how exhausted he felt at the moment as if his energy had been drained.

And yet he doesn’t, his gaze going to the unfinished designs sitting on his worktable still on the planning stage, then going to the door where he could hear Alhaitham still moving around the kitchen.

“It’ll be fine. I just need to hold it together for a bit,” Kaveh tried to convince himself before he stands up straight, takes a deep breath, and stretched ignoring the ache that darts across his skin.

Once he believes that he looks presentable Kaveh leaves his bedroom and ventures into the kitchen.

~~~

Alhaitham senses Kaveh’s familiar presence in the kitchen rather than heads him at first, although soon enough he can just faintly hear Kaveh’s usual grumbling through the noise cancellation function of his headphones.

After cooking breakfast Alhaitham had chosen to read as he ate considering he had free time before work as usual.

Kaveh huffed looking at Alhaitham with narrow eyes when the younger man doesn’t answer his question in regards to the banging of pots and pans Kaveh had heard this morning.

“Of course, you’re ignoring me again, you and your books,” Kaveh grumbled as he walked over to where the freshly made pot of coffee sat.

The rich scent of coffee and heavy scent of spice drifted through the house almost lazily, filling it with a familiar cozy warmth.

Normally Kaveh didn’t mind the scent and even found it comforting after living with Alhaitham for a while, but at the moment it felt far far too harsh.

The queasiness in his stomach seems to stir a bit more, as pain darts across his skull. His nerves feel as if they’re completely fried, sitting on a razor’s edge, he can only hope that Alhaitham thinks that the heaviness in his steps is due to him just waking up.

Kaveh is so focused on grumbling under his breath as he’s fixing his plate of food that he doesn’t notice Alhaitham reach up and turn off the noise-canceling function of his headphones.

“Honestly making so much noise so early in the morning I swear,” Kaveh huffed as he sat down across from Alhaitham with his plate of food.

Kaveh is just picking up his fork when Alhaitham finally speaks, making him freeze.

A soft snort leaves Alhaitham’s mouth, “Racket? I don’t want to hear that from the person who spends all night usually hammering away at nonsense. Besides, this is my house in the first place.”

As Kaveh looked at him with narrowed eyes, irritation clearly appearing on his face, Alhaitham couldn’t help noticing that Kaveh looked slightly pale.

Kaveh was truthfully always a bit pale, which Alhaitham chalked up to many things for one Kaveh’s erratic work schedule and sleepless nights.

Even last night Kaveh had been working away in an effort to meet a deadline, obviously sacrificing his sleep as usual in an effort to get it done.

Alhaitham looked at Kaveh briefly, turquoise meeting carmine. Kaveh as usual doesn’t have a hair seemingly out of place, although Alhaitham does note the faint circles beneath his eyes which pointed to Kaveh clearly not getting enough sleep lately.

And yet despite him finding nothing particularly out of place, Alhaitham can’t help but feel as if something is off for some reason.

“I was not hammering away on nonsense! I was working on my project not to mention fixing up your horrible excuse of decor,” Kaveh snapped, an all too familiar scowl tugging at his lips. “Honestly I thought I told you not to go furniture shopping without me.”

Kaveh quickly takes a sip of his coffee once he stops speaking, feeling that familiar irritating tickle flaring to life in the back of his throat alongside that familiar soreness.

It helps just a tiny bit although it does nothing but make the nausea lurking in the pit of his stomach intensify for a moment, and Kaveh swallows thickly from behind his mug still raised to his lips.

He tries to ignore the way his clothes feel far too rough on his skin. Abnormally scratchy, each movement no matter how small had a sharp sting dancing along his skin.

Kaveh glances down at his food, unsurprisingly it looks unappetizing to him at the moment. Even though he had only tentatively sipped on his coffee this morning his stomach feels far too full.

Kaveh hadn’t realized he’d zoned out, his mind wandering as he stared at the food trying his best to prepare himself but when he eventually does look up he finds Alhaitham looking at him as if waiting for Kaveh’s response.

“What is it Haitham,” Kaveh asked with a slight scowl. He resisted the urge to fidget beneath Alhaitham’s gaze, although that doesn’t stop the fear and nervousness from writhing in his chest.

Did Alhaitham notice something that Kaveh missed when getting ready today? Did he know Kaveh was sick?

So many of these questions circled Kaveh’s exhausted mind at such a speed it almost feels as if they were making the dizziness worse.

Eventually, Alhaitham speaks, dragging Kaveh out of his swirling thoughts. “If you plan on going out, be sure to lock the door,” Alhaitham told him.

Kaveh gave a soft huff. “You better not take my key,” the words are grumbled under his breath as he picked up his fork.

While Alhaitham was used to Kaveh zoning out from time to time, it is the fact that Kaveh is strangely quiet only occasionally speaking up rather than aimlessly chatting and complaining to fill the silence that has Alhaitham taking a bit more notice.

Kaveh was someone who wasn’t a quiet person, whether it be working on his projects, complaining, or merely talking about whatever random thought that popped into his head, Kaveh was never quiet.

He was always talking, his eyes bright with excitement. For Kaveh to be quiet…well Alhaitham found it rather odd.

When Kaveh picks up his fork and begins eating is when Alhaitham notices that Kaveh’s usually steady hand had the slightest tremble to it. Kaveh didn’t seem to even be aware of it himself either.

For a few moments, it’s quiet, allowing Kaveh to focus on doing his best to force down the food, each bite sitting heavily like a weight in his already sore stomach. He has to repeatedly bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grimacing as cramps twist at his stomach.

This was fine, not good but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before.

Suddenly Alhaitham speaks, causing Kaveh to look up at the other man.

“You should try and see if you can get an extension for-“

Alhaitham is cut off suddenly when a rather loud growl comes from Kaveh’s stomach, causing both of them to jump slightly.

Kaveh freezes his eyes wide as his face flushed red, and he catches sight of the slightest hint of surprise on Alhaitham’s face if only for a second.

“Stop staring at me,” Kaveh huffed as he glanced away feeling almost pinned under Alhaitham’s gaze at the moment.

It felt a bit oppressive honestly, Alhaitham had very piercing eyes which always seemed to scrutinize whatever subject he laid them on. So it was no surprise that whenever he directed that gaze towards Kaveh, that Kaveh couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous.

The familiarity they had with each other rarely made it any better either, if anything Kaveh felt as if Alhaitham could see every chink in his metaphorical armor.

Did Alhaitham know something was wrong? After all, before Kaveh’s stomach had interrupted Alhaitham he’d seemingly been about to say something about Kaveh getting an extension.

“How can I not stare when you’re clearly making a spectacle of yourself,” Alhaitham said drawing Kaveh out of his swirling thoughts.

Between the fog blanketing his mind and the pounding headache, it takes him a moment or two to process Alhaitham’s words, but when he does as usual irritation wells up within him.

His eyes narrowed once more as he glared at Alhaitham eventually Kaveh looked away though, clicking his tongue and he mumbled soft curses under his breath.

Alhaitham finishes eating first, getting to his feet as he glanced at the nearby clock. He can hear Kaveh muttering something under his breath, although Alhaitham can’t understand the language due to it not being in the Sumerian tongue he does recognize the usual tone Kaveh usually has when he’s throwing a fit.

The language Kaveh was using was the language of the desert dwellers, with the other man having told Alhaitham that he grew up there for a bit as a child.

Alhaitham had heard Kaveh speak it many times, sometimes purposely during an argument or when drunk, or discreetly when he didn’t realize Alhaitham was present.

“Make sure you lock the door if you leave the house,” Alhaitham said as he grabbed his key off of the hook beside the door.

“Just don’t take my key,” Kaveh called out.

It is only when Kaveh hears the front door close shut, letting him know that Alhaitham had left for work that he slumped forward in his chair. Resting his head down for a moment as his hand went to his stomach, cringing when he feels it gurgling and shifting with each cramp that twisted at it.

Now that he’s allowed himself to relax, the nausea and dizziness slams into him with such ferocity that it leaves him breathless and panting.

A grimace tugs at his lips as pain blossoms along his entire body, a horrible weight settling in his arms, back, and chest.

A sharp stinging burn dancing across the surface of his skin leaving a buzzing jitteriness in its wake, as if he were being subjected to a constant electro attack.

His clothes feel far too rough on his skin, almost as if they were made of sandpaper.

For a few moments all Kaveh can do is sit there, his arms wrapped around his stomach cursing every archon he can think of as well as Celestia itself as he does his best to ride out the waves of pain and nausea.

It takes him a good few minutes of taking shuddering breaths in through his mouth, his eyes squeezed shut as they sting with tears.

Slowly but surely the pain and nausea slowly begins to dull bit by bit till it’s settled as something of a background annoyance.

Sniffling and lifting his head Kaveh wipes at his eyes with trembling hands, he truly really does hate this. “Fuck…”

Kaveh glances at his plate of half-finished food but glances away when his stomach makes a loud gurgling noise as if warning him to not even entertain the idea of trying to eat any more of it.

Kaveh really hated wasting food, something that he'd learned and had been practically drilled into him as a child. Food in the desert could be hard to come by although many desert dwellers did their damnedest to scrape by to survive not everyone was so lucky.

Which often made times like this when the flare-ups made it difficult for him to eat that irritated Kaveh more than anything.

“Pisses me off,” he huffed under his breath as he got to his feet and quickly put the leftovers inside the mist flower box.

It would keep the food cool and somewhat preserved for a day or so at least.

With that taken care of, and a small apology whispered to Lesser Lord Kusanali, Kaveh returned to his room, his hand lingering on his stomach which was practically throwing a tantrum at the moment. The dull cramps leave him feeling as if someone was pinching his insides.

His steps are heavy with exhaustion and yet he doesn’t lay down to take a nap and stay in bed like he should truthfully.

He had some work to do and designs to go over, he was just thankful that he wouldn’t need to leave the house today because just the thought of doing so has his head spinning.

It wasn’t Kaveh’s first time working through a flare-up, and as he goes over the all too familiar tools on his workstation he’s reminded of his time in the Akademiya.

And despite the pain tugging at every inch of his body Kaveh can’t help the small smile that crawls across his face as he picks up one of the nearby pencils.

His hands are still trembling ever so slightly as they had been when he’d been eating earlier, however, it doesn’t bother him after all Kaveh is used to it.

As Kaveh works, he can’t help but find his mind turning to his time as a student. The many long sleepless nights he’d spend studying, gathering references for his classes, going to the tavern with friends occasionally, simply sitting somewhere and sketching.

Kaveh also finds his mind wandering to when he and Alhaitham had been closer when younger. The times Kaveh would find himself sick due to lack of sleep and Alhaitham would come by to see him after class, carrying a book or three in hand as usual.

He’d chastise Kaveh openly all while keeping him company, although even back then Alhaitham had been blunt, his words had lacked the almost vicious bite they’d gained in later years after he and Kaveh’s falling out.

Surprisingly while he’d had flare-ups more frequently back then he was always able to keep Alhaitham from finding out, just as he did now.

Making sure his medicine was hidden out of sight of Alhaitham’s critical eye. Never speaking a word about the doctors appointments to anyone.

He was nearly living a double life at this point. Which again wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to.

Time seems to pass in a blur as Kaveh worked and for a little while he was able to ignore everything, the pain, the nausea, the fever, all of it.

As frustrating and infuriating as it could be sometimes Kaveh would be dead in the ground before he admitted that he truly hated art.

Placing his quill and ink aside for a moment Kaveh scrutinized his progress with a careful eye.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that he was no longer focused, that his concentration had been broken to some extent that suddenly everything seemed to hit him all at once.

Kaveh slumped forward slightly with a groan, bringing a hand to his face. It felt as if someone was trying to crack his skull open, his vision wavering as pain sparked and lashed across his skin.

“Need…to lay down…” Kaveh murmured to himself his words slurring slightly whether it was the exhaustion or the dizziness he wasn’t sure.

He shakily gets to his feet, honestly though trying to walk at all in his current state is a mistake. The moment he stands up the room seems to rapidly sway and tilt before his eyes, wave after wave of dizzying nausea churning in his stomach and pulling a sickly-sounding hiccup from his lips.

Kaveh attempts to take a step, in what he thinks is the direction of the bed but he doesn’t make it, the ground feels as if it disappears from beneath his feet and Kaveh is unconscious before he hits the ground.

~~~

Alhaitham arrives home early having taken the first opportunity offered to him to head home. Surprisingly the house is quiet as he opens the door and at first he believes Kaveh has left the house and gone out considering it wasn’t unusual.

However, he quickly disregards that thought when he notices Kaveh’s key on the hook by the front door.

It wouldn’t have been the first time Kaveh had forgotten his key and gone out though,  which was a habit Alhaitham found annoying.

At the moment though he only finds himself comfortable embracing the silence and temporary calm in the house.

Alhaitham makes his way through the house, stretching ever so slightly when he noticed that his shoulders felt a bit stiff from sitting down at his desk most of the day going over paperwork, just as usual.

He almost reaches his room, passing by the door to Kaveh’s room when he hears a loud crash from inside, as if someone had tripped over something and fallen.

At the noise Alhaitham pauses, sighing. And just like that, his chance to embrace the peaceful silence in the house had disappeared.

It wasn’t uncommon for Kaveh to trip over things, after all his room was a mess of scarcely organized chaos something Alhaitham never failed to bring up whenever Kaveh threw a fit over him leaving his books out.

For a moment Alhaitham finds himself waiting, listening to see if he would hear the usual sounds of Kaveh scrambling to get up or even soft cursing in the Sumerian tongue or the desert dweller's language.

And yet, there’s nothing. Just more silence…

Sighing softly, Alhaitham turns to Kaveh’s door and knocks.

“Kaveh?”

He listens again for a moment, adjusting his headphones slightly so that he could keep an open ear.

Alhaitham had rather sensitive hearing, and wearing the headphones helped ease that alongside the fact that they were soundproof and had a noise-canceling function.

For a moment the house is almost eerily silent as if it were holding its breath in anticipation. Then Alhaitham hears something, a weak groan followed by a whimper of pain.

“Kaveh,” he called out again as he placed his hand on the doorknob, it turned slightly beneath his hand and he scowled, noting that it was unlocked.

Alhaitham opens the door and in the next moment freezes when he sees Kaveh collapsed on the floor, curled into a ball.

It wasn’t the first time Alhaitham had found Kaveh collapsed seemingly due to lack of sleep from overworking himself, he should be well acquainted with it considering it was a sight he’d even seen in the Akademiya, it was logical really.

And yet that familiarity does not stop him from rushing to Kaveh’s side, his eyes wide, nor does that stop the uncomfortable, almost painful twisting sensation in his chest.

He drops down to his knees beside Kaveh, now that he was closer he could see that Kaveh was writhing weakly in pain soft almost inaudible whimpers leaving his lips. His skin was worryingly pale, and his clothes were soaked with sweat.

There was blood trickling from beneath his nose, another thing Alhaitham had seen before when Kaveh had collapsed due to overworking himself while sick.

And yet it makes the current situation no less frightening and… infuriating .

Alhaitham quickly reaches out but pauses when Kaveh groans loudly, his body jolting with a soft yet wet-sounding hiccup.

“Kaveh,” Alhaitham said when he saw Kaveh’s eyes flutter open slightly.

Kaveh groans again, murmuring something that Alhaitham struggles to understand as his words slur between a mix of broken Sumerian and desert dweller's tongue.

Another hiccup jolts Kaveh’s body, sounding absolutely nauseating, in the very next moment his body shudders as a rumbling gurgling noise pries itself free of his throat right alongside a surge of pale greenish slightly watery vomit.

The slimy sludge-like mixture poured from his mouth almost lazily with a consistency of oil paint.

Kaveh coughed and spluttered harshly, his eyes going wide as more awareness crept into them. He whimpers loudly, a pathetic noise of misery right before another surge of pale vomit gurgles up his throat, the food that had been sitting so heavily in his stomach earlier coming up only semi-digested.

It has an almost slimy paste-like consistency as it congeals and cools on the hardwood floor.

“Easy, now. Just let it out," Alhaitham whispered quietly, as he brushed Kaveh’s hair back from his face, noting that Kaveh’s skin felt more than a little warm.

As Kaveh chokes up another wave of lumpy semi-digested vomit onto the floor, Alhaitham glances up towards Kaveh’s workstation from the looks of things Kaveh had been working on before he collapsed.

It takes a moment for Kaveh’s retching to taper off, threads of bile and drool dripping from his lips into the mess almost lazily, as he lays there panting soft hiccups and weak empty gags leaving his lips.

Kaveh whimpered as he blinked slowly in an effort to clear the tears from his eyes. Everything hurts, every inch of his skin feels as if it’s stinging and burning, his head is throbbing viscously to the point that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d cracked it open when he’d fallen to the floor.

Cramps continue to twist at his stomach despite the fact that he’s sure he’s brought up every single bit of his breakfast.

Tears continue to well in his eyes despite his best efforts to blink them away, each ragged breath he takes makes his chest ache.

“Are you finished,” Alhaitham asked as he tried to ignore the way his heart seemed to twist uncomfortably at Kaveh’s current state.

Kaveh’s nose had stopped bleeding soon after he’d stopped retching, leaving a trail of red to stand out on his far too-pale skin.

Although he seemed awake and aware his eyes were glazed over and glistening with tears.

Instead of responding to Alhaitham he simply lays there trembling which is even more worrying if Alhaitham was honest.

Kaveh typically acted one of two ways when he was sick, either he would whine and complain as Alhaitham tended to him sometimes being rather dramatic about it or he would be strangely quiet and docile, often simply wanting to sleep and wordlessly cling to Alhaitham.

The latter was more worrying because from what Alhaitham knew about Kaveh alongside the times he tended to him when sick, Kaveh only became quiet and docile when his fever was incredibly high.

But strangely enough, while Kaveh definitely had a fever, it wasn’t enough where his behavior would be altered like it was at the moment.

“Let’s get you up, and then I’ll contact Tighnari,” Alhaitham said as he laid a hand on Kaveh’s back.

However, the moment he does Kaveh screeches in pain causing Alhaitham to jump back slightly startled.

For a moment he can only sit there with his eyes wide, perhaps if Kaveh wasn’t feeling like his body was trying to destroy him, he may have chuckled or laughed telling Alhaitham that he looked like a startled cat.

After a moment or two Alhaitham eventually speaks glancing towards the door then the bed, and makes a decision.

“Okay, alright I’ll take you to the Bimarstan,” he said quickly.

That has Kaveh jolting into awareness and he grits his teeth when he feels Alhaitham’s hands hesitantly touch him once more clearly worried about hurting him, and yet that does nothing to stop Kaveh from flinching at the sting that dances along his skin where Alhaitham lays his hands.

Kaveh’s thoughts seem as if they’re swirling in a panic. He couldn’t go to the Bimarstan, this wasn’t good.

“No,” Kaveh all but manages to shout, as he flinches away from Alhaitham’s touch.

“No,” Alhaitham echoed as he froze for a moment, and even through his pain and nausea-fueled haze, Kaveh can hear the incredulous tone coating his voice.

Kaveh cracks one eye open slightly, his breath shuddering as he swallowed thickly. “N-No hospital, d-don’t need one,” he told him, his voice a trembling, rasp.

“You’re delirious,” Alhaitham said almost immediately as he moved to grab Kaveh.

Kaveh speaks again and it’s the weak, pleading tone that his voice has that makes Alhaitham pause. “T-there’s medicine…in the nightstand. A lock box…please Haitham.”

For a few seconds, Alhaitham is silent, his teeth clenched as Kaveh’s words dawned on him.

Kaveh can just about make out the realization, in Alhaitham’s gaze and so he closes his own eyes to spare himself the sight of all his hard work and careful preparation he’d done over the years going down the drain in an instant.

If Kaveh wasn’t already crying from the pain he’d be wailing in frustration truthfully.

He feels Alhaitham’s hands on him after a few moments, they’re soft, containing very few callouses, but most importantly they’re cold and feel amazing on his too-hot skin and he doesn’t even realize he’s leaned into his touch until he whimpers softly.

“Bare with me.” He hears Alhaitham murmur although Kaveh still says nothing even as he feels himself being lifted up into Alhaitham’s arms.

He bites his lip doing his best to keep from crying out, he’d already made such a fool of himself. It was just his luck truthfully that Alhaitham of all people would see him like this, he didn’t know if it was the flare-up making his face feel as if it were burning or the sheer shame and embarrassment.

He feels Alhaitham carrying him across the room, before eventually feeling the familiar sensation of the bed beneath him.

Kaveh shakily places his arm over his eyes, doing his best to keep his breath under control. The last thing he needed was a panic attack on top of everything thing else going wrong at the moment.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

He can hear the sound of Alhaitham retrieving the medicine in the lockbox, the soft familiar clip of the lock being opened.

The soft rattle of the pill bottles being removed and the soft thump as they’re placed down on the nightstand. Kaveh hears it all until suddenly there’s silence.

Kaveh can feel Alhaitham staring at him, and hear those gears turning in his head.

“How long has this been going on Kaveh?”

Alhaitham’s voice sounded nearly as monotone as usual, however, Kaveh does catch the familiar edge to Alhaitham’s voice. A mingling mix of frustration, worry, and surprise.

The faintest hint of a tired smile tugs at Kaveh’s lips, he truly was at the end of his rope if he thought Alhaitham was worried about him. Or perhaps Kaveh just truly looked that horrible enough that Alhaitham pitied him.

Both options left a sour taste in his mouth. A blow to his pride that he despised.

The nervousness and fear is doing nothing for his still churning stomach, and he can’t help but give a soft hiccup, swallowing thickly before he answers. “Since…a little while before I entered the Akademiya,” he murmured hesitantly, glancing at Alhaitham.

He quickly glanced away, however, his face burning with shame beneath Alhaitham’s critical gaze.

For once Alhaitham’s expression isn’t blank, a deep scowl on his face as he crossed his arms staring at Kaveh. A multitude of questions springing to the forefront of his mind as he remembered the many times Kaveh had been sick during their Akademiya years.

It was something that Alhaitham always chalked up to Kaveh overworking himself, in combination with not getting enough sleep and skipping meals. It was a habit that Kaveh had even now.

Alhaitham had never thought to question it truthfully, especially as it would get dismissed by Kaveh as just a cold or the flu.

Now though he realizes he should’ve been more thorough in regards to this matter.

Alhaitham paused, pursing his lips as he closed his eyes as though he were steeling himself and Kaveh has a good idea of what Alhaitham may be about to ask.

Alhaitham took a few deep breaths, and finally, he asked, as he slowly opened his eyes, “Is it eleazar?”

While eleazar was technically eliminated by Lesser Lord Kusanali alongside the Traveler rather recently that didn’t mean that the toll it took on a person simply disappeared.

Kaveh gives him a look of confusion but shakes his head. His flinches in the next moment, curling into a ball as a whimper slips from between his lips.

“N-not eleazar…just a bad flare up…” Kaveh forced out his words slurring between the desert dweller’s tongue and Sumerian.

Kaveh squeezes his eyes shut, his nails practically digging into the skin of his upper arm as he tries to ride out the unrelenting waves of pain.

The room feels as if it’s spinning around him, despite the fact that he knows that he’s pretty much laying completely still and Kaveh can’t help but cringe when his stomach makes a low gurgling noise.

A harsh cramp twisting at his stomach has him cringing as a wave of nausea rolls over him. Despite the fact that he was pretty sure he’d brought up the entirety of the breakfast he’d forced down earlier, his stomach still felt too tight and heavy.

Exhaustion sits heavily in his body like a weight, and he doesn’t even realize that he was beginning to drift off to sleep until he felt Alhaitham’s hand on his shoulder.

It’s a strange feeling truthfully, Alhaitham’s touches being so featherlight and hesitant. Clearly worried about hurting Kaveh and making him feel worse.

It was always like this between the two of them, despite the fact that they argued and bickered frequently, the actions they performed for each other always spoke the loudest.

“Here, wake up and take the medication or I’ll have to take you to the Bimarstan,” Alhaitham told Kaveh as the other man looked at him with slightly glazed-over eyes.

That brings more awareness to Kaveh’s eyes, and he huffed softly as Alhaitham handed him the medicine. “Fine, fine,” Kaveh mumbled, knowing by Alhaitham’s tone that the word ‘no’ wasn’t an option. Kaveh had pleaded with him after all.

It takes Kaveh a moment to actually take the medicine, but that’s simply because of the nausea licking at the back of his throat making the thought of putting anything in his stomach an unpleasant one.

Once Alhaitham is sure that Kaveh has taken the medicine he turns his attention to the mess on the floor. He’s making a mental checklist of the cleaning supplies he needs to grab as well as anything Kaveh may need when Kaveh suddenly speaks.

“S…sorry bout the floor…Haitham,” he said his words slurring heavily with exhaustion.

“It’s fine. The cleanup will be simple really,” Alhaitham reassured him. He turned to Kaveh, noting that the other man was staring at him with half-lidded eyes, clearly trying to stay awake for a few moments more. “Get some rest for now. You’re exhausted and sick.”

Kaveh gives a soft hum scowling. "Sorry..for making you...do all this... take care of me and stuff..." Kaveh mumbled his words slurring as his mind drifts in and out of

consciousness. It’s a struggle to make sure he’s still talking in the Sumerian language.

Kaveh feels Alhaitham’s hand on his forehead for a moment, likely checking to see if Kaveh’s fever had risen at all.

He hears Alhaitham speak just before he falls asleep.

“If you have time to feel guilty, then use it to focus on getting better and taking better care of yourself.”

As Alhaitham gently strokes Kaveh’s hair until the man drifted off to sleep he can’t help but notice the fact that his hand is trembling slightly. A testament to just how worried he’d been and still was.

Whenever Alhaitham and Kaveh interacted, many things seemed to fly out the window. Each invisible rule they had for themselves being torn down by the other with an often irritating ease.

Whenever they were around one another Alhaitham made new discoveries about himself. The one he has now though as he stares at Kaveh’s face as he sleeps is well…

“What an annoying discovery,” Alhaitham murmured.

Love truly was a strange thing.

~~~

Alhaitham can’t help but stare at Kaveh as he sleeps instead of reading his book like he’d intended to, finding that it was rather hard to focus.

Kaveh has been asleep for a few hours truthfully, his exhausted body doing its best to catch up on the rest it’d missed and desperately needed.

Kaveh surprisingly doesn’t snore in his sleep, although he does occasionally sleep-talk soft murmurs in the desert dweller language that Alhaitham can’t understand. But he can recognize the tone Kaveh is using, pleading.

Despite being from Haravatat, learning the desert dweller language was a difficult task, with many different dialects to the point where even someone native to the desert could become confused.

Kaveh often reminded Alhaitham of the very sandstorms that swirled through the desert honestly. Loud and chaotic, never giving Alhaitham a moment's peace even when they weren’t in the same place, either occupying his mind in some facet or coming to bother him.

And yet Alhaitham had at some point once more gotten used to the way Kaveh intruded into his life again. Just as he had when they’d grown close during their time at the Akademiya.

He’d never know peace when in Kaveh’s vicinity.

Alhaitham gets to his feet when Kaveh begins to stir in his sleep, his eyes flutter open and he flinches, squeezing them tight for a moment with a soft hiss, letting Alhaitham know that his head was still hurting.

Kaveh’s eyes open a bit more hesitantly this time, and he slowly looks around, tired red eyes roving around the room confused.

As Alhaitham calmly waits for him he pours a glass of water from the pitcher he placed on the nightstand earlier.

Eventually, Kaveh gives a soft humorless chuckle. “It would seem like what happened wasn’t just a horrifying nightmare.”

Kaveh runs a hand over his face ignoring the aches and pains dancing along his skin.

“Here. Can you drink this,” Alhaitham asked as he held out the glass of water for Kaveh to take.

Kaveh glances at him and then at the water, the sight of it has a slight queasiness stirring in his still aching stomach. However the fact that his throat feels as dry as the desert wins out.

“Hmmm,” Kaveh murmured as he sipped on the water. It is only when he’d moved and sat up ever so slightly that he realized that he was wearing different clothes.

“Did you…did you change my clothes Haitham,” Kaveh spluttered only to wince when pain rippled across his chest.

Alhaitham sighed, crossing his arms, “Who else would have done it Kaveh? Besides, you were a mess.”

“I think I can be forgiven for not looking my best when I’m sick,” he snapped with a soft huff and as he glanced away he missed the slightest hint of a smile on Alhaitham’s face.

If Kaveh was arguing back and putting up his usual fight this was good, it meant he was probably feeling a bit better.

“You need to eat something,” Alhaitham said as took the cup when Kaveh had finished with it.

Kaveh scowled at Alhaitham’s words, the thought of eating anything made his stomach churn as cramps continued to twist at it relentlessly.

A low growl coming from it as the water sloshed slightly in his gut. As a wave of nausea rolled over him Kaveh laid back down with a sigh. “I don’t think I can,” he told Alhaitham, glancing away his cheeks flushing a slight pink with embarrassment when his stomach gave another growl.

Kaveh closes his eyes for a few moments taking slow careful breaths in an attempt to calm it.

A moment or two later Kaveh feels the bed dip ever so slightly as Alhaitham sits down on the edge of it.

Kaveh can’t help but jump slightly, the motion sending his stomach sloshing and sending an acidic hiccup bubbling up his throat when Alhaitham places a careful hand on his stomach.

Alhaitham frowns as his hand moves carefully along the expanse of Kaveh’s stomach, and truthfully he isn’t surprised that Kaveh feels as hesitant to eat as he was.

Alhaitham can feel Kaveh’s stomach cramping and twisting beneath his hand, the upset organ writhing like a ball of snakes beneath Alhaitham’s fingers as low gurgling noises came from it.

Kaveh flinched, whimpering and burying his face in his arms slightly when a low, almost liquidy-sounding growl comes from his stomach, and Alhaitham feels the faint rumbling beneath his fingertips.

Another hiccup jolts Kaveh’s body slightly, followed by a soft groan. Kaveh mumbles something that Alhaitham can’t make out due to Kaveh’s words slurring together.

“What is it,” Alhaitham asked as he tilted his head a bit in an attempt to see Kaveh’s face. “Did you want something to drink?”

Kaveh took a deep shuddering breath, shaking his head slightly although he doesn’t look up, his face still buried in his arm. “N-no…it’s the water…” Kaveh said, swallowing thickly in between his shuddering breathing. “It-it’s…not sitting well. It hurts.”

Alhaitham couldn’t help but cringe slightly when he felt a particular bad cramp ripple through Kaveh’s stomach eliciting a low whine from the blonde.

“Do you think you can keep it down,” Alhaitham asked quickly as he looked over to where the trashcan was, in the area where he left it when he’d finished cleaning.

Kaveh curled further into a ball as he gave a trembling shake of his head, practically panting at this point. Kaveh gives an audible swallow before speaking his voice barely above a trembling whisper, “No.”

A wet, sickly gurgling belch rumbles up Kaveh’s throat in the very next second sending a surge of bile-tinged water splattering onto the blankets sounding like rainfall on a tarp.

Kaveh shakily raises his head, his eyes burning with tears as a violent retch rakes its way across his already sore throat.

As the gush of water tapers off, Kaveh is left coughing and sniffling, doing his best to force back his retching and gagging.

He absolutely despised this, these flare-ups, getting sick like this, he absolutely hated it and as he feels Alhaitham’s hand on his back carefully rubbing it he can’t help the sob that leaves his mouth.

Kaveh was so used to suffering through these flare-ups alone so just Alhaitham’s presence is something that Kaveh is thankful for.

“Let it out Kaveh, holding it in like that’ll hurt worse,” Alhaitham told him as his hand ran carefully along Kaveh’s back.

Kaveh whines loudly but does open his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut and panting, tears welling up on his eyelashes as a thread of drool drips almost lazily from his lips.

Thankfully Kaveh doesn’t need to wait long a wet, hiccup has a small trickle of water tinged cloudy with bile splattering onto the mess already soaking into the sheets.

As his gagging tapers off, Kaveh is left sobbing from the exhaustion, frustration, and pain.

Alhaitham continues to rub his back, gently shushing the man. “It’s fine, the blankets are easy to wash after all. You can sleep in my bed for now.”

Under any other circumstances, Kaveh may have protested, may have turned Alhaitham down. But after today Kaveh wants nothing more than to climb into bed and sleep, hopefully through the duration of this flare-up.

#emetophilia #My writing #emeto fic #Genshin emeto #genshin sickfic #sickfic #anime whump #male whump #Who wants a character study in the form of a sickfic #Kaveh is a mess #hurt/comfort #Kaveh has chronic pain hc #caretaking #Alhaitham genshin impact #genshin impact kaveh #alhaitham/kaveh #The hold these two have on me is insane I hate them

[janekfan]

ooooh..... difficult anniversary and/or you’re not human anymore bingo prompts for jarchivist obliteration?

AAAA This took so long! I am SO SORRY!!! <3 <3 <3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31123295

Jon was used to hurting.

Used to hiding.

Which is why he didn’t notice. Didn’t understand what was happening to him and more importantly why.

A panic attack here. A bad day there. A cold, maybe? Until the scars on his skin from the worms and the corkscrew and the scratching woke one day as though they were fresh and new. His skin crawled, the slightest touch filled him with revulsion and, lord, he had to keep it together because Martin would almost certainly overreact and Jon hated, hated to be the source of his worry.

So he would ignore it as usual.

Whatever it was would pass. And he could avoid being the center of attention for this thing that was out of their control. He’d read the Lord of the Rings. He knew about the less romantic side of anniversaries. What was one more thing for him to overcome?

It didn’t stop them from hurting like the day they were drawn on his body and while the rents in his skin looked the same as they ever did, he nearly bloodied himself after a particularly wretched nightmare with his frenzied clawing.

And it passed. The burning, bleeding, boring sensations disappeared and Martin hadn’t suspected a thing. Okay, that was a lie. But he seemed mollified enough when Jon wrote it off as a tough week at university.

“I’m just tired, habibi.” He forced himself to reach for Martin’s hands, sighing in gusty relief when everything was normal and allowing himself to get wrapped up in warm arms.

The mark left behind by the Distortion ached deep and throbbing and somehow also elsewhere. It was a phantom pain traveling the myriad corridors of his veins, his arteries, his nerves and when he couldn’t rid himself of it in any conventional way, he waited. It would pass. It would. Just like the last one. This was just pain. He knew pain. Was fast friends with it by now and this was nothing like his worst days.

“Jon-darling?”

“Mm?” He was flipping through the pages in a book, not too fast, not too slow, not really reading anything, trying to pretend that everything was normal when his foot cramped up like he’d been bitten. He was practiced now in not looking; there wouldn’t be anything there anyway. His skin might as well have been a great big door and the only way through to the other side didn’t involve knocking.

“You look pale.” Ah. Well. Pain like this would do that to a man.

“Just a little sore today, love.” It wasn’t a lie. Jon set the book aside, not bothering to mark whatever random page he’d landed on, and threaded their fingers together.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk me into carrying the shopping.”

“What are you talking about? I always help carry the shopping.” Despite his chronic conditions, Jon pulled his own weight.

No, stop. Of course you do and you have nothing to prove, especially not to Martin of all people.

“You’ve been run down.”

“I have not!” Martin fixed him with a stern look and he cowed under his scrutiny. “Perhaps a bit, but you know how these things go.”

“I do. And I can’t help but feel like there’s something you aren’t telling me.” Here it was. Martin’s overture, his olive branch. His invitation to come clean and tell the truth and avoid his wrath when he found out later. But Jon never was a quick learner of these social lessons.

“I’m fine, hayati.” Jon soothed, tipping Martin into his newly throbbing shoulder. “I’m fine.”

The next three hit him like a lorry, nearly as hard as they had a year ago and nearly all at once.

His burn scar, just like the worm scars, felt blistered as badly as the day he’d taken Jude’s hand, and he shook violently at the onset of it, thankful he was squirreled away in his office at the University and not crying into Martin’s shirt even if that’s where he’d prefer to be but Martin hates burns.

Hates how they look, how twisted and ugly they become when they scar.

Burns made him upset. Burns made him sick.

He hates them. Hates them. And while Jon was reasonably sure Martin would never turn him away when he was hurting like this, the fluttering undercurrent chanting what if wouldn’t leave him be.

So Instead he sniffled away in the dark, wrist pressed between his knees in a vain attempt to stop the shaking while he tried to remember how to breathe.

It was dark when he slipped into bed beside Martin, dead asleep after a run of night shifts. For a frantic moment Jon wanted to shake him awake, beg for reasurances, for relief, but it would ruin this. Martin looked so peaceful, face relaxed in repose, cheek soft when Jon pressed his trembling lips there.

“Jon... ?” Washing out on a swirling tide his voice was fuzzy, thick with exhaustion, and the hand that brushed the small of his back lingered only for the time it took for him to drift back under. No. He’d wrought enough damage here. Better for Martin to rest without worry. He shouldn’t have to deal with Jon and his problems. Especially when they would be arriving like clockwork for the rest of his life. Jon pressed himself against Martin’s warmth, trying to soak it up, stop the shivering. How could he be so frozen when his whole right arm was engulfed in flame? Silent, he let the tears come, closing his eyes against a burgeoning dizziness he knew would only grow worse.

Be quiet. Just be quiet. Don’t disturb him, you mustn’t. You’ve nothing else to give except more burdens that aren’t his to carry.

The ceiling was spinning so fast above him; lights, cast shadows, cabinets whirling, reeling, spiraling so much he’d be sick with it any minute. The vibrations from Martin’s pounding footsteps resonated through the whole of him, pulsing, in time with his uneven battering pulse.

He barely remembered the actual fall, just the terrifying sensation of being weightless and the fear welling in his throat like coagulated ink. Forever. He’d be falling forever. Nothing to hold. To grab. To slow. To Know.

Endless.

His scream wrenched away from him in the rushing winds filling up his ears, stealing his voice, his breath. No one could hear him in this place. Martin would never know what happened. That Jon was eaten up by the sky. Surrounded infinitely on all sides by a sea of simultaneous nonexistence and brutal presence. Jon’s awareness whittled down only to the pull of gravity in all the wrong directions.

“Jon!” A bleary shape manifested above him, blocking out the worst of it. Hands, gentle, probing, searching subconsciously for breaks, contusions, his training winning out over the panic Jon could just make out in the set of his mouth. Fingers ran soft through his curls, seeking out any swellings and Jon winced when he found one. Must’ve struck his head on the way down. Those cool hands settled, cupping his face, and twin thumbs brushed over his cheeks. “You’re warm, love.” A murmur, almost to himself as Martin puzzled.

“B’bit of, of vertigo, s’all.” Uncoordinated, Jon’s arm struck out as he tried to reach for him and landed on his wrist. “Tryin’...nnh.” He gripped Martin like a lifeline, slamming his eyes shut against the need to be ill.

“You’ve clocked yourself.” Fair enough. “But I think you’re alright. Think you can move?” With no other option than to speak lest he set it all swirling again, Jon whimpered. “Okay.” With one more pass through his hair Martin stepped away and soon enough had Jon settled as best he could on the tile, tucked beneath a blanket with a cold pack pressed to the back of his neck. Relief came gradually and Martin’s unasked questions lingered on the edges of their companionable silence. “Better?”

“Mm.” Despite the hard surface applied to every pressure point, Jon was falling asleep cocooned in the safety of Martin’s soothing company.

He wouldn’t be able to keep this up

Martin teased him mercilessly about the loss of his voice and Jon let him have it if it kept him from noticing how sore his throat really was. He wanted to tell him that it was Daisy’s mark, to cry and come clean and beg Martin to stay.

But that wouldn’t be fair. Jon had to be a whole person in this relationship and stop relying on Martin to pick up the slack. He would figure this out. He’d prove his past didn’t control him.

After he could get out of bed.

And here was what he’d strived to avoid. Finally laid low.

“I worry, Jon. You know that.” That was the problem. Martin was already going to be late to work from all his fussing. With the scrap of voice he’d gained back he protested in a hoarse whisper, syllables squeaking past what felt like a shredded voice box and listened to Martin call in again. He had to be better than this but he was overwrought, dangling at the end of a very frayed rope. This marked a sharp decline and Jon was sure it hadn’t escaped Martin’s notice that they were coming up on the date he’d more or less died. He could barely rouse himself in the mornings for school, drifting through lessons and relying more on his TA than he’d like. More than once he’d splurged on a cab, not sure if he’d make it on the tube and Martin’s fretting and worry and distress only made Jon more secure in his conviction. If it was this bad already, how bad would it become if he knew the reason it was all happening? They were supposed to be free of this. Jon wasn’t supposed to keep doing this to Martin.

Melanie’s scar throbbed, chipping away at any scant reserve he had left and ruthless with its aim. It was worse than Daisy’s even though he could understand both motivations. Daisy was putting down a monster. Mel was striking out at someone trying to help, driving home with the scalpel that no good deed goes unpunished. Rationally, he knew he’d deserved it. Too bad it didn’t dull the sting of it all really.

“Darling? Sweetheart?” Jon forced his eyes open, gasping when it sent the dark room to pirouetting, his stomach to churning, staging a mutiny against the scant meal he’d forced on himself not too long ago. Anything he’d gained in their short reprieve had long melted away under the stress. “I’m here, what’s wrong, love?”

“Nnothing…” he regretted the word as soon as it passed his lips.

“You’ve a fever so high it woke me. That’s not nothing, Jon.” Mercifully, he gave him a moment to gather his thoughts, catalogue how much more of this he could take before it broke him. Burned hand shaking, Jon clenched his fist which didn’t help the pain rocketing through his arm and into his heart, but steadied him.

“Jus’a, a bit of a flare up.” Those sometimes came with fevers.

“Oh, love. Why didn’t you say?”

Because it was a lie. Because I didn’t want you to worry. Because I never want to see you upset over me. Because I’m not worth it. Because if it’s always going to be like this--

“Din’t want you to, to…” The cramping agony slurred his voice badly, stringing syllables together with an uncooperative tongue was too much effort. “Nngh.” Dazed and groggy, Jon shut his eyes tightly, trying to focus on Martin’s soothing touch stroking over his face. Like a coward, Jon let sleep rescue him from the truth.

It was the flesh that gave him away.

Woke him screaming; hot and twisting in agony with Jared’s phantom fingers dug into his rib cage. More fingers clamped onto his shoulders, shaking him, a distorted voice calling, shouting his name over and over and over.

“Jon!” Martin was little more than a blur, obscured by tears, and Jon’s panic was reflected straight back at him. “Where does it hurt?”

“Wha…?”

“Where, habibi? Left, right? Please, Jon.”

“Not...not. S’not--” He couldn’t get the words to come, to admit after so long what he’d kept poorly hidden.

“Not what?” Frustration bled sideways into his words and Martin gripped him harder as though he might tear the answers out of him.

“Real.” It burst from him in a raw, somehow soft explosion. It wasn’t. Not really. The wounds were long healed over.

“Looks plenty real from here, Jon.” He batted away questing fingers.

“No. No.” There was no way he’d be able to explain through this piercing agony, the literal holes invisible in his skin.

“It’s the fears, isn’t it? Your marks, your scars.” Martin already knew judging by the disquiet in his tone. This was merely confirmation.

“Yes.” He sobbed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” There was hurt in his voice, sadness and betrayal, alongside the ire.

“I thought, I thought--” Jon couldn’t breathe, panic and pain stealing the very air from his lungs. This was only going to get worse. After all they’d done, he’d done--how was he still a monster?

“Shh, shhh, thought what, love?” Martin held him carefully, mindful of all the ways Jon hurt, ticking off fears and scars on mental fingers, trying to figure out how long he’d been hiding it. How long he’d been suffering alone.

“Supposed to be, god, supposed to be safe, free of this.” He was trembling now, with chills or anxiety or both, gasping for every sip of oxygen and swallowing seawater for his trouble. “Can’t, what if--?” Choking himself off, Jon strangled. Martin stayed silent, rocking them both gently, back, forth, soft, slow, calm, calm, calm, and when Jon finally spoke again had to strain to hear him over the echo of a hammering heart beat. “Every year?”

Every year.

He couldn’t Breathe.

Everything was close. So close, too close, and he was crushed under the implications.

“Jon?” Now he was heaving for it, fast and deep, and while Martin could feel the strain it was to breathe he knew it wouldn’t be long before Jon lost consciousness altogether. “Hey, hey, listen, hayati, slow down, sloow down.” Jon’s entire body lifted when Martin inhaled, and again, and again, until he picked up the thread and made more than a half decent attempt. “Okay, there you are, you’re doing so well, sweetheart. So well.” Time passed in measured breaths, so much so that Martin had begun to think Jon had fallen asleep when:

“You’ll leave.”

Soft and shattered. All the fear that he’d piled onto the pain flowing out of him, a dam burst and broken.

“I won’t.” Jon’s movements were hard-won but he managed to shift himself enough to face him. His expression was firm.

“You, you can’t be stuck taking care of an i’invalid again, Martin. I won’t. I won’t have it.”

“Ah. You won’t have it.” Martin scoffed. “And what about me? When do I get a choice?” Jon, eyes wide and dark with exhaustion and pain, looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, perhaps a third.

Or like Martin was a predator and Jon was prey, cornered and hurting.

“You shouldn’t want this.” Me. “This, this burden. This trap!”

“You’re not some sort of trap!” Martin could see the moment Jon decided to change tactics, to try and convince him otherwise, win the game. Too bad for Jon that Martin knew him better than he knew himself.

“You want this don’t you?” He sneered, so convinced, and while once upon a time it would have made Martin wilt and retreat, now he was familiar with Jon’s lashing out. Sorry, Jon. “I won’t be another reason for you to martyr yourself.”

“And I won’t be scared off by your nasty attitude.” Softening, he reached for Jon’s trembling hands, running his thumbs methodically over the backs of them. “I won’t. Together. Right?”

“Martin.” His name broke open on a sob. “I don’t. I don’t want this for you.”

“Tough.” Smothered, Jon’s next words died in his throat, a fledgling bird crushed before it could take flight. “You don’t get to choose for me, even to protect me.”

“Every year--”

“We don’t know that. Not yet.” Martin eased him down. “You aren’t a burden. You aren’t trapping me here.” He kissed away the tears, the hopelessness, even as Jon shook his head nigh delirious.

“I am, I am.”

“No, love. What you are is worn out and hurting.” Martin teased out Jon’s tangled curls, stroking his fingers through them and watching him relax as much as he could at the moment. “What you’re going to do is let me take care of things. Of you, Jon.”

“Don’deserve you.” Fresh tears welled in half lidded brown eyes, slipped into the fly aways at his temples when they closed. “Never have.” Martin stood, pressing lips to his hot brow, intending to gather up anything he thought might help.

“We’ll talk when you’re feeling better.” Jon nodded and Martin turned to leave, stopping when he found himself caught by quaking fingers tangled in his sleeve.

“I, I love you.” Contrite, whispered and awaiting rejection. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, darling.” Martin leaned down, thumbing away new tears. “I know, I know and I love you too.” He stole one more shivering kiss. “Let’s get you taken care of.”

#TMA #the magnus archives #jon sims #martin blackwood #jmart #jonmartin #sick #anniversaries #scars #fever #pain #hurt #fights #reassurances

[startledstars]

I got covid lol

(and I’m unvaccinated)

here’s how it went:

the initial onset was sudden and rapid. I was at my family’s house the day after Christmas. At around 8pm (?) my back started to hurt. I drove home to lay down.

you know that feeling you get right before you fall ill? For me, it manifests as a certain type of warm, neutral smell. Like the kind you get right before you sneeze, but more lingering.

I got that pre-sick feeling, so I ordered DayQuil, NyQuil, and food to be delivered in the morning. I also took vitamin C, NAC, and Zinc.

About half an hour later (9-9:30pm?) I laid down as the fever set in.

That first night was rough. Headache, body pains, fever, and no medicine to take the edge off. I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to the Bible while praying pretty much the whole time.

I was still awake when the NyQuil was delivered at ~9:30am the next day.

I drank like, a lot of NyQuil that morning (because I needed to sleep.) I also took lots of vitamin C and NAC again. Due to a total loss of appetite, I drank smoothies instead of eating.

Sleep didn’t come easy that day or night. However, I could breathe just fine and barely coughed at all. The worst part was the lower back pain.

By the following morning, the worst was over.

I had the flu in 2019. It incapacitated me for three days. Covid was about 50% as bad as that flu. Comparatively much more manageable.

On New Year’s Eve (4-5 days after initial symptoms) I had a moment where I smelled a few things that weren’t actually there. Scents without a logical source one after the other over the span of a few seconds. As it happened, I realized that I’d be losing my sense of smell.

Less than an hour later, that’s exactly what happened. I drank coke, but it was like lightly sweetened carbonated water (as opposed to the syrupy caramel smell/taste I expected.) I ate a slice of pizza and could appreciate the texture of the meat, vegetables, cheese, and bread, but the taste was muted.

Even now, almost 10 days after the initial onset of symptoms and 5 days after losing smell/taste, drinking black coffee is almost like drinking water. Also, I can’t smell check my clothes to decide what needs to be washed; everything goes in the laundry now, even if I tried it on once and tossed it aside.

My appetite is almost non existent. I eat maybe half a chipotle bowl’s worth of food along with a small bowl of Cheerios. It’s hard to eat more than a few bites at a time.

I’m also exhausted. My limbs feel heavy. Small tasks like putting away water bottles leave me out of breath. On top of that, the insomnia is persisting. I can’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time despite being tired.

I used to have bad chronic fatigue a few years ago along with severe depression. Going downstairs to get a bowl of cereal once a day was my limit. I still struggle with these issues, but not nearly as much. Fatigue due to Covid is, comparably, much more manageable.

The good news is that every day, I feel a little better. I have a little more energy. I can sleep better and get stuff done. In a week or two, I should be back to 100% 😁

To summarize my personal experience:

Covid has sudden, rapid onset

The first day and a half are the worst

Early symptoms: fever, body ache, headache, eye pain. Like the flu but not as bad.

Late/lingering symptoms: loss of smell, muted sense of taste, fatigue

Supplements like NAC, vitamin C and zinc might help. They may explain my rapid initial recovery and relatively mild symptoms. I’ve been taking NAC for years; it is a supplement that boosts lung health and a healthy immune system. This may be why I had no issues with coughing/breathing.

Seriously, the flu was so much worse 😅

So again, from my personal experience as an unvaccinated person, Covid seems as dangerous as, or less dangerous than, the seasonal flu. This disease definitely exists. It is highly contagious.

But it poses a risk to the same sub population that would also be at risk from the flu, which has been around for years. I can see why the elderly or immunocompromised might be concerned about Covid, the same way they may be concerned about the flu.

I can not see why this is an illness that requires a “new normal” in the form of perpetual forced mark wearing, social distancing, and totalitarian government control.

Also, both my parents are fully vaccinated. They both got sick too, and their symptoms were just as bad as mine. I know at least three other fully vaccinated family friends who got sick.

So, threatening people with unemployment unless they take an ineffective experimental mRNA altering drug with unknown long term effects makes even less sense now than it did a few months ago.

Diseases like the flu evolve to be more contagious and less deadly each year. The Spanish flu, which killed 25-50 million, evolved into one of the strains of seasonal flu, which has a significantly lower death rate. The same thing may be happening with Covid. It wasn’t that deadly in 2020. It became even less deadly by the end of 2021. If the pattern continues, in 2022, there will be even less of a logical reason for all these mandates and restrictions.

But I have a feeling all this will continue. Two weeks to slow the spread turned into two years of tyranny with no end in sight. Especially on this website, I can’t shake the feeling that people want to lose their freedoms because they don’t want to be held responsible for their own lives. They want to be perceived as moral, heroic even, without actually standing up for anything. The mask and vax propaganda allows them to do just that. People want the simplicity that the pandemic narrative offers: you’re a good person if you wear a mask, take the jab, and don’t question the government. You’re a bad person if you don’t ‘do your part.’

People as a collective look for a reason to feel good about themselves while simultaneously searching for scapegoats to project negativity on. People can recognize this tendency in themselves, realize it makes them easy to manipulate, and adapt a more nuanced perspective of themselves and their fellow man.

But they usually don’t do this; it’s too much work.

This is incredibly cynical and I wish, I wish someone would prove me wrong. But it was never about saving lives, and most people know that on some level. They just don’t care, because they’re getting exactly what they want.

#spiritual awakening #new age #covid #personal #did u know omicron is an anagram for moronic #y’all don’t know how deeply confused I am by the human race #how obvious the world becomes when you realize the truth of sin nature #how it is human nature to choose the path that leads to your own destruction and that of others #how Jesus offers a way out of that #but legit people just don’t want His solution or any solutions period #bruh this was supposed to be a post to let people know #this virus isn’t too bad don’t worry if you wouldn’t worry about the flu #but it always turns into a rant about the human condition #like ‘if being free means having to face the truth about myself and this world I’d rather die a slave’ #that’s how people act and it is chilling

[fallenrepublick]

Oof I love suffering I guess so how do you think the zabrak brothers (including Riot, Brutus, and Sunder) would react to having an s/o who is chronically ill and their health is in decline?

I’ve had some long stays in the hospital and I find you can learn a lot about someone when they have to take care of you in those moments.

Thank you for sharing your writing!! I love your blog! Hope you’re having a good week!

Ohhh I see. Well... This is a horribly painful concept, especially if it's particularly serious. And of course I'm going to do that.

Get some tissues

Maul remains strong. He's dutiful, attentive. It's all he can be. It's not combat, there's no danger to protect you from. He can do nothing. And though he's there, watching over you, holding your hand to his lips and kissing your knuckles with a silent will not to cry at the sight of you, there's resentment. Not at you, never at you. At himself. At this sickness, at his helplessness. He had promised to always look after you, had sworn up and down that he would ensure nothing happened to you. But he wasn't prepared for this. How could he be? There was no way to prepare, the thought had never crossed his mind.

And yet it dawns on him, should something go wrong, should everything take a turn for the worse, he could lose you. He could come in the medbay to the very thing he fears the most. Even if you look well enough now, how could he be sure? What if it doesn't stay that way? He doesn't want his arms to be left empty, his ear devoid of your voice, the only thing that had ever brought him comfort in life. He can't bear the thought of being left with nothing, not again, not this time, please.

He doesn't leave, he refuses to. He sleeps in the chair beside your bed, hunched over with his head leaning on your mattress. The slightest stir wakes him up, he brings everything to you, brings you to everything that can't be carried. His well being means nothing, nothing, so long as it's for you. Just don't leave him. You promised you wouldn't leave him.

Savage, in that classic way older siblings do, shifts into a responsible mindset. He keeps himself busy, cooking everything and anything he can find that's easy for you to keep down, making sure your room is spotless, keeping up with your medication. He throws himself into his duties as the one you love, promising he'll take care of you. Thoughts of the worst creep into his mind, but at least in the beginning, he pushes them down in favour of keeping you comfortable, keeping you safe.

But pushing down the pain and uncertainties only allows them to fester, to grow and consume his every waking moment. He tries to mask it, tries to stay strong and responsible for you. Still, it becomes easier and easier to see through, and you hold his face, asking what's wrong, what troubles him so often that he's barely slept. Dark circles are painted below his eyes as he stares up at you, and you hold his face, brushing at his cheeks.

And he tells you how he tries not to fear, how he's done everything not to be terrified for what may happen. But it's impossible. You can promise him nothing, nor does he expect you to. Instead, you kiss his forehead. "Whatever happens... it'll be okay."

Feral isn't as good at hiding. He sees you in this state, and while he tries to push down everything, he chokes, and the tears start falling immediately. He doesn't know why. Nothing's for certain. Why does he have to be so weak? So useless? His job is to keep your spirits up, to help you, not fall apart like a coward right in front of you. And yet he's already failed.

His head often rests gently on your torso, feeling you breathe as he trembles, reminding himself that nothing is set in stone. You'll be okay. You'll be okay. That isn't set in stone either, but he has to fool himself. If only for now.

He checks in with you thoroughly and often. There are pangs that strike through his chest when you turn down food more and more often, tension in his hearts like he's never known when the only thing you ever seem to do is sleep. No. You're healing. That's what it is. Sometimes, he'll lay on the bed next to you, holding you to his chest as if it's the last chance he'll get to do so.

You're healing. You're healing.

But Sunder backtracks, just a bit. Perfection. Swallow his feelings, if only for now, do what he was born to do: Protect his mate. What he feels about this doesn't matter. Only you. Do everything you ask of him, bring you comfort when there's little other source. His kisses are often on your forehead, ignoring the fact that he can do nothing in reality. It's cosmetic, all of it. His help is but the tiniest change, practically useless. But he has to.

He forgets often that he himself has to eat, has to sleep. All he can think of is you. You, who's given him so much. Who's taught him about the world. His saviour, his guide from a life he had always thought was the end. He owes you his life. And yet he can't give it. Not like this.

When you sleep, when your slow breaths seem just a bit too slow for it to be right, he holds your hand, he makes wishes, ones impossible to grant. "I would trade my life..." he says tightly, shaking, "I would give everything... Please... Please... Take me instead... I'll do anything..."

Riot tries and tries to lighten your mood when he can. He cares for you as he very well should, yet through it all, there's that classic goofy grin on his face. He can make you laugh, always, even in the worst of times, and he uses it every moment he's in your presence. As long as you're smiling, he can tell himself it'll be fine.

But the smile falters every so slightly sometimes. He doesn't want to hide, doesn't want to wear the mask in front of you like this, yet he can't bring himself to take it off either. He has to see you smile. If you smile, it'll be okay.

He's instructed himself not to break down, not even when others ask how he feels, not even when they offer to help. Even in moments where he's alone, cooking, bringing you your daily medications. Even when you're asleep and he's brushing at the skin of your arms. Even though he's tearing himself apart inside, thinking about how stupid he is, how he could do more, how he's not trying hard enough. No, he has to be fine. So long as you smile, so long as you know he loves you. He will be fine.

Brutus doesn't react for much of it. If anything, he goes about helping you as if it were always the routine. He's got the schedule memorized, trying with hidden desperation to bring a sense of normalcy. But his words carry less bite. Where he once would've said, "Gods, what the hell do you think you're doing, huh Firefly?" he now says, "What are you doing?" It's flatter, his voice softer, and his eyes watch you as if he realizes something, yet you can't quite pin down what it is.

He sits at the side of your bed, listening to you speak, holding your hand in silence, lifted a bit and rubbing at your fingers. You still smile at him, and he can't bring himself to return it. He doesn't scowl anymore, his face brought more to a neutral state, and it remains there no matter the task. Simple conversation, helping you eat if you're particularly weak, lulling you to sleep. His face never changes. He's gone from an open book (at least to you), to completely unreadable.

But it's when you're asleep in the late hours of the night that it unravels. He sits on the floor of the hallway, knees pulled up to his chest, fingers gripping into his head, leaving marks from his nails, and he cries. It's audible, sobbing, his voice bright in the dark, empty hall. The tears are hot on his cheeks, falling to the floor, onto his clothes. He can't stop them. He won't. Because the sound doesn't pass into your room. He thinks you don't know.

But when you see him each morning, it occurs to you that there's only one thing that can leave those kinds of bruises.

#cw: illness #darth maul #savage opress #feral opress #brutus #sunder #riot

[honey-dewey]

Finding the Right Voice

Frankie Morales/Mute and chronically ill Reader

Word Count: 1,804

Warnings: Reader is both mute and has gastroparesis. Reader throws up once. 

After much pestering from the boys, Frankie reluctantly signs up for a dating app, intending for it to be a joke. Until he falls in love. You and him text daily, getting to know each other so intimately despite never meeting. At least, never meeting until Frankie wants to take you on a date. So how the hell are you going to explain to him that you are constantly ill and will never speak again?

Frankie had always thought dating apps were a waste of time. Who the hell actually met the love of their life through the Internet? 

Frankie Morales, that’s who. 

Of course, he’d been hesitant to tell the boys he’d found someone, mostly because he knew they’d give him shit about it. And they did, of course. But now, months after meeting someone, they realized Frankie was genuinely happy and toned the teasing down. 

“I’m just worried!” Frankie said, staring at his phone. “They haven’t responded in days.” 

“Dude,” Benny said, gesturing with his beer bottle. “They’re probably just busy. Or out somewhere with shit cell service. I dated a girl like that. She went on vacation with her parents and didn’t call for like. Two weeks. Thought she’d died. But when she got back.” He leaned back, smiling drunkenly. “The apology sex was mind blowing.” 

“Okay!” Santiago interjected, throwing an arm around Frankie’s shoulders. “You think they’re on vacay, Fish?” 

Frankie shrugged, grabbing his own beer. “I dunno. They aren’t the vacationing type.” 

William snorted from across the table. “Just like they aren’t the phone call or meet in person type?” 

Immediately, Frankie knew where this was going. “Ironhead.” 

“I’m just saying!” William pointed out. “How do we know that Catfish isn’t being, well, catfished.” 

Frankie sighed into his bottle. “I don’t wanna talk about it Will.” 

Santiago, who was somehow the voice of reason here, nudged Frankie. “You texted yet today?” 

“No.” 

“Why don’t you?” Santiago suggested. “Then leave it alone for a while. I doubt they’re meaning to leave you, they seem too nice.” 

Frankie picked up his phone and opened his texts. Aside from the group chat he had with the boys, the aforementioned number was the last one he’d texted. 

Frankie: Hey, haven’t heard from you in a bit. You doing okay? 

Twenty miles away from the bar Frankie was in, you were leaned over the toilet in the hospital, hurling away what little applesauce you’d eaten for dinner. 

Sitting back against the cold tile of the hospital bathroom wall, you sighed deeply upon hearing your phone ping. Who the hell wanted to talk to you right now? 

Of course, it was Frankie. 

Settling down in the bathroom, you unlocked your phone and texted him back. 

You: I’m so sorry Fish. I’ve been a bit sick. 

Fish: You don’t have to apologize for that. Are you feeling any better? 

You snorted softly. As if. 

You: Not really. It’s just gotten worse. Spent most of today throwing up.

Fish: You’re drinking water, right? Gotta stay hydrated. 

You snapped a photo of your half full water bottle a nurse had brought you and sent it to Frankie. 

You: Yep! Gotta finish this before I go to bed. 

Fish: That’s good

Fish: Wait a second. Are you in the hospital? 

You swore silently. How the fuck? Unless he frequented the same hospital as you, how the hell did he even know where you were from that blurry water bottle photo? 

You: Yeah, I got here today. Nothing too serious, I was just too dehydrated

You felt bad lying to Frankie, but you really didn’t want to tell him the truth. The truth was too long, too complicated. Frankie would probably leave if he learned the truth. 

Fish: I’m not too far away, if you’re at the hospital I think you’re at. Want me to drive you home when you leave? 

You: Nah. I’m staying with family rn and it’s a haul to get out there

Another lie, another stab of pain through your heart. 

Fish: Okay. I still wanna take you out though. We could get dinner and walk around the park. 

You almost started sobbing. 

You: Oh Frankie. I wish I could. 

As soon as you typed the message, you deleted it. Best not to let him think anything was wrong. Instead, you took a minute and finally replied with, 

You: That sounds lovely Fish. 

Fish: But?

You: But I don’t think I can.

Back at the bar, Frankie was slumped over the table, staring at your tiny message of rejection. 

“Dude, that’s hard,” Benny commented. “I’m starting to think Will might be right.” 

“I’m sorry?” William said, coughing as he swallowed wrong. “Say that again?” 

“No.” Benny leaned over the table and patted Frankie’s wrist. “I got nothing dude. Nothing.” 

Santiago sighed. “Why don’t we stop giving Fish a hard time?” He said, seeing the hard lines in Frankie’s face appear. “They said they were in the hospital, so maybe it’s really bad.” 

“You think?” Frankie asked, looking up with wide eyes. 

“Maybe,” Santiago said. “They might not want you to worry about them.” 

Frankie looked back at his phone, at the waiting message. He picked his phone up and typed one more message before shutting it off and pocketing it. 

Frankie: I just wish I could get to know you. For real. 

You stared at your phone, tears sliding down your face. Frankie would never know, if you could help it. He’d never know that you were so sick all the time. That you couldn’t eat anything without hurling it up hours later. That you hadn’t uttered a single word since you’d turned sixteen. That you’d never speak another word again. 

Putting your phone away, you abandoned the water bottle and shakily crawled back into bed, sobbing silently into your pillow until you fell asleep. 

The next morning, a team of nurses checked you over and deemed you okay to leave the next day. You nodded numbly, absently fiddling with a small stuffed toy as they started your laborious morning routine. 

“This came for you last night,” a nurse said as everyone left your room. She placed a worn out baseball cap and a folded note on your bed. “From a very nice gentleman who seemed rather heartbroken.” 

The nurse left, leaving you to grab the cap and the note. 

The cap was worn out, the edges all frayed and the logo on the front nearly illegible. The note was in much better condition. 

Hey. 

So, I’m sorry about what I said last night, and I feel like a text wouldn’t have made it better. This is my favorite hat. It’s seen some shit, just like me. And just like you, I think. 

Look, last night, I sounded like a dick. I want to make it up to you, I really do. But I don’t know how to take you on a date or anything. I sure hope it isn’t because of me that you don’t want to meet. I know my nickname is Catfish but I promise I’m who I say I am. 

Tomorrow, I get off work early. If you’d let me, can I pick you up and take you out? Or at least take you back to my place for a movie or something? Please. 

Love, your Frankie. 

You ran your fingers over the lettering, memorizing how Frankie wrote every single word. Maybe, maybe it was time to open up. The worst that could happen was rejection. 

Scooping your phone up, you texted Frankie back. 

You: Tomorrow at 4, that’s when they discharge me. Get here early tho, I have some stuff to explain.

The next twenty four hours were hell for the both of you. You were both plagued by so much anxiety it was hard to do even the most basic of tasks, but you managed. Eventually, you received the text you’d been dreading all day. 

Fish: I’m here. Visiting room B. 

You took a deep breath. All your personal belongings were in a drawstring bag you put over your shoulder. You headed out of your room and slowly down the hall, towards the visiting room. 

Opening the door was the hardest thing you’d ever done. 

Once you’d opened the door, you stopped in the doorway, taking Frankie in. 

He looked exactly the same as he did in his photos. Tall, handsome, kind. He smiled upon seeing you, and you swore your heart stopped. 

“Hello,” Frankie said, moving towards you and holding out his hand.

Hello you signed, waiting for Frankie’s reaction. 

He paused, his hand falling to his side. “Mute?” 

You nodded. 

Frankie simply smiled again. “So that’s why you don’t like phone calls,” he said. “It’s okay. I know some ASL.” He paused, taking you in. “Can I hug you?” 

Yes please.

He wrapped you in a warm hug, allowing you to collapse into him. Months of text messages and listening to his voice mails were nothing compared to this. 

Eventually, he pulled away, and you two sat on the uncomfortable couch. 

“So what’s with the tube?” Frankie asked, gesturing to your face. 

You pulled a whiteboard out of your bag and began to write, going slowly so you spelled everything right. 

I have a condition called gastroparesis. My stomach is paralyzed and won’t move food to my intestines. I “eat” through a port in my side and this tube in my nose leads to my stomach, so whatever I drink can be drained out. I went mute before I got diagnosed with this.

“Oh.” Frankie blinked a few times. “So I guess dinner is off the table too.” 

You snorted, laughing as best you could with no voice. No dinner. you signed happily. But a movie would be nice.

“A movie it is,” Frankie said, standing. “C’mon. I’ve got a bunch of movies at my place. And I think the boys are coming over tonight.” 

You stood, following Frankie to his beat up old truck. He talked your ear off about all sorts of things while he drove home, and it wasn’t until he’d pulled into the driveway that you’d remembered his hat. 

Close your eyes. You signed, digging around in your bag. 

Frankie did, laughing when you snuggly placed his hat on his head. 

“Thank you,” he said, taking your hands. “I was really worried you’d catfished me at first. I didn’t know what to think when you didn’t want to call or meet. I dunno, I just thought you weren’t, y’know, you.” 

You shook your head, pulling your hands out of his. I wouldn’t dream of it.

Frankie smiled. “I love you.” 

I love you too Fish.

That night was the happiest you’d been in years. Frankie’s friends were all amazing people, and all three of them immediately overlooked your muteness and illness. You were happy and Frankie was happy. To them, that was all that mattered. 

“So Fish,” Santiago said, leaning across the couch to nudge Frankie’s bicep. “Aren’t you glad we forced you to download that dating app?” 

Frankie looked at you, curled up under his other arm, sipping water and waiting for the feed bag with your dinner in it to finish draining into your port. You looked up at him, smiling and nestling closer. 

“Yeah. I am.”

#triple frontier #frankie morales #francisco 'catfish' morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #pedro pascal #my writing

[lailyn]

Argh, I know, I shouldn't be greedy, but I just love a good whump fic and I love Strangefrost and I love your writing... so, might I humbly ask for another?? Maybe?? For the - I don't know - the digestive system maybe?

Here ya go! This one's a bit longer, it kinda got away from me. 😅

A Fool For You

It began with a relic gone missing. A sword forged in blood and tears, the sword was said to have been used to lop off the head of a tyrannical emperor after he had used it to slaughter his own brothers, all six of them. 

It was a dangerous katana that required a calming ritual at every turn of the century to temper its blade, for it could turn the susceptible, the most innocent into murderous monsters. 

Stephen had been lucky to escape unharmed that morning when he awoke to the blade pressed against his throat, wielded by an invisible hand, controlled by long-range magic.

Stephen had been lucky Loki was there to banish the spectral intruder and restore the katana to its resting place in the Sanctum vault under lock and key. 

Reading the blade that had almost taken his human from him only led them back to Kamar-Taj, but the trail ended there. 

There was a traitor in their midst. 

"Nothing's going to happen to me." 

Or so Stephen kept insisting. 

Loki was no fool. It would take more than vapid assurances to assuage this urge in him to tear whoever dared harm a hair on Stephen's head limb from limb.

Wong thought it could be a Zealot who might have escaped from having to join Kaecilius on his eternal journey to be one with the Dark Lord Dormammu. 

Stephen made a sound argument of the low probability, seeing how the Dark Dimension was as good as sealed forever with the Book of Cagliostro gone, but Loki had disguised himself as one of them that very night and searched each and every Master, fellow and apprentice for the telltale mark on the forehead. 

If someone cared for his opinion, Loki thought Stephen was being too complacent with his life.

"Loki, I am not going to lock myself up in the Mirror Dimension!" 

Stephen had the gall to laugh at Loki's suggestion. For that, Loki did not speak to him for an entire day. 

As the night grew closer, Stephen had given up trying to apologise for something he did not believe he did wrong and resigned himself to the idea of attending the communal dinner at Kamar-Taj without his plus one. Sorcerer Supremes had traditionally been lonesome creatures, and initially Stephen even thought of himself as such. 

Until he met Loki. 

Stephen abhorred gossip. If the Sorcerer Supreme and the (reformed) God of Mischief were indeed an item, he would rather come clean about it than suffer salacious stories being passed around behind his back. 

But since Loki was a no-show, Stephen was going to suffer them for one more day, until he could figure out what to do...or what not to do. When it came to Loki, abstaining was just as important. 

So that was how Stephen had come to sit at the head of the table, flanked by a representative from the other two Sanctums. Wong had drawn the short straw by virtue of his being Stephen's second-in-command and sadly had to stay behind in New York.

A young man barely out of his teens came to the high table with a set of tea. 

“A new apprentice. I recruited him from the streets of Kowloon City,” Master Murata murmured in the Sorcerer Supreme’s ear. “I think he’s got potential.”

Stephen looked at the scabies burrows in the webs between the boy’s fingers, the badly damaged nails from a chronic nail-biting problem superimposed with a fungal infection. 

Must have been homeless, he deduced. Family problems? A runaway?

Stephen watched as the boy poured a pinkish golden liquid into the three cups in front of them. It glittered with edible gold petals. 

“Sour plum tea,” Master Murata nodded in approval. He held up his cup, “Here’s to our Sorcerer Supreme. May you live in interesting times.”

If the wording sounded odd, it could only be due to the Guardian of the Hong Kong Sanctum’s oriental heritage. 

Stephen surreptitiously waited for both Guardians to finish drinking first before raising his own cup to his lips to take his first sip.

"Sorcerer Supreme, there you are!"

"Wong?" Stephen's forehead furrowed at the sight of his friend marching down the dais toward him. "What are you doing here?"

Wong grabbed the cup out of the Sorcerer Supreme's hand and drank it all in one gulp. 

"That hit the spot," he declared, delicately fingering the corners of his lips. 

"M-Master Wong," Master Murata stammered. 

"What's gotten into you?" Stephen muttered. He held out the empty cup for a refill, but Wong quickly grabbed his wrist. "Wong!"

The apprentice scurried away with the tray; Wong followed the retreating form with his eyes until the boy disappeared amongst the dinner crowd. 

With a wide smile Stephen had never seen the likes of it on Wong’s face before, his best friend boldly grabbed him around the wrist and yanked him out of his seat. "This is simply no time to be drinking! Come, I have much to tell you!"

"It's just tea," Stephen grumbled, more curious than embarrassed at being manhandled in public.  

Just as they passed a few Masters in the hall, Wong stumbled and would have fallen had Stephen not caught his friend. 

“Really, Wong, one would think you had been imbibing…” Stephen's voice trailed off at the sight of perspiration dotting his friend's forehead. “Wong?”

“Take me to your room,” Wong grunted, and Stephen froze, for Wong’s voice suddenly sounded so much like -

“Loki?”

In the blink on an eye, Stephen teleported them to his room and Wong slowly sank to his knees with a soft, forlorn sigh; his form shimmered as all manner of glamour dropped, revealing Loki's shaking form. 

At the tell-tale shudder, Stephen quickly grabbed a trash can from under his desk and shoved it under Loki's head just in time to catch the first of his stomach contents. 

"Poison?"

Loki nodded frantically as another wave of extreme nausea surged up his gullet.

"But how? We were all drinking the same thing!" Stephen demanded.  

“It wasn't the tea,” Loki gasped. “It was the cup.” 

"If you knew it was poisoned, why couldn't you have just told me? Why did you have to drink it?" Stephen berated.

"Now you have evidence," Loki managed in between gasps. "Somebody was trying to kill you."

Loki lashed out a hand which his lover caught unthinkingly; into Stephen's palm Loki pressed the ceramic cup he had drunk from. 

"It's the lacquer," he wheezed; the pain raging in his stomach was making it difficult to breathe. "It...reacted with the gold leaf. Turned the tea."

Stephen stared at the object in his hand. True enough, the urushiol lacquer had corroded away, leaving behind a suspicious white deposit that had formed a sediment at the bottom of the cup. 

Loki had done it all on purpose...impersonating Wong, stealing Stephen's drink right under his nose and making sure everyone saw him drink out of the Sorcerer Supreme's cup -

And stumbling in the hallway with witnesses around had been in part an act, the rest of it very, very real...as real as the blood dribbling down Loki’s chin as his body tried to purge the poison. He heaved and heaved uncontrollably into the trash can, his long hair limp and matted to his scalp like a crown of thorns.

But before Stephen could hold his hair back for him, another violent cramp folded Loki in half, his desperate cry of the kind Stephen had never heard out of the God of Mischief before.

"Oh, Loki…" Stephen could not help but moan. "Why must you always do this?"

Loki shuddered and wiped the blood away with the back of his hand. He slowly sank to the floor, prostrating on the tatami mat, arms wrapped tightly around his stomach. 

"I'll live," he sighed. "You wouldn't have."

Stephen leveled his writhing lover with a frosty look. "What made you think I could live with this on my conscience?"

Loki's eyes fluttered to a close. "As long as you lived, I don't particularly care."

Stephen heaved a sigh of frustration and sickening anxiety. "What can I do?"

"Hang the perpetrators by their entrails, that would be a start," Loki groaned. He curled up as tightly as his cramping muscles would allow. "Norns!" 

Stephen rummaged through his apothecary cabinet and waved potion after potion of possible remedial value, only for every jar to be waved away. 

"I've purged it all." Loki bared teeth slick with blood in a grotesque grimace as he tried to breathe through the worst of the cramps. "It's just the sequelae now."

Tears sprang to Stephen's eyes as he dropped onto his knees next to his ill lover. "You are such a fool."

Loki chuckled weakly. "Ah yes, that I am. A fool for you."

A furious tear escaped and made its way down Stephen's cheek. He gathered Loki's long limbs in his arms and lifted the trembling figure gently into his lap, holding him upright. "I'm such a fool."

"Stephen, don't." Utterly exhausted, Loki could do no more than squeeze the protective arm around his neck. "I'm alright. Truly."

"I will find whoever did this," he heard Stephen vow in his ear and the tension drained out of Loki's body like water.

"Good," Loki hummed faintly. 

If putting himself in jeopardy was what it took to get Stephen to give a damn about his own life...then Loki had no objection whatsoever. Nor had he any objection to the comfortable weight of Stephen's hand on his aching belly, or to the healing magic furious at work, aiding the repair of any internal damage caused by the poison. 

"I am going to sleep now," Loki murmured, sagging in Stephen's embrace like a sack of bones. 

As Loki drifted off into a restorative slumber, he could hear Stephen mumble something in his ear. It sounded a lot like 'I love you', but Loki could not be sure.

Stephen was just going to have to say it again when next he awakened.

#strangefrost #loki #froststrange #loki whump #sick loki #fic #ask #doctor strange

[drprettyboyspence]

Memory Lane

Dr. Spencer Reid/reader

Summary: Reader just can't seem to get to sleep one night so she decides to walk around the house she shares with her boyfriend, Spencer Reid. As she travels around the house she remembers significant moments in their relationship.

words: 2.9k

warnings: season 12 spoilers, mentioning of mental illness, nothing else to my knowledge! (just a lot of fluff) 

a/n: This is my first Spencer Reid fic and I kinda went off the rails with the word count, let me know if you enjoy it :)

I turn myself over in bed for what feels like the four hundredth time this hour, facing the ceiling now. I can hear the rustling of leaves outside and the distant sirens of the city, remembering how those sounds used to bring me some sort of comfort as a child, now all I can think of is the death and tragedy being an FBI profiler has brought me into contact with, the horrors at the end of the trail of sirens. Mostly noticeably though, I hear the steady breathing of the man lying next to me in the king bed, glancing over at my boyfriend of almost 4 years I smile warmly, his unruly hair draped over the pillow, glad to see him in deep sleep. Recently he hasn’t been sleeping well, suffering from PTSD from his time spent in prison as well as all the trauma the poor man has been through in the last 10 years of his life. I quietly get out of bed, making sure not to bother him, he deserves a good nights sleep and we have to be at the BAU in a depressingly minuscule amount of hours. My feet hit the cold wooden floors and I wonder for the uncountable time “Why did we decide on wooden floors?” A memory of an argument with Spencer answers my question,  

“Because silly, don’t you know that carpets can hold up to 200,000 bacteria per square inch, this room is 100 square feet, 144 square inches per square foot, that is 28,800,000 bacteria in our bedroom alone.” I remember shaking my head at him, he’s always been such a germaphobe. In fact, when we first met, he shook my hand, and later when I confided in JJ and Penelope that I had pretty intense feelings for the resident genius of the BAU, they mentioned that he usually hates shaking hands, is known for refusing to shake the hands of many people the team comes into contact with on cases. He shook my hand right away, it’s one of the things I love about him and we always say we knew right away that we had a special connection. I glance at Spencer’s sleeping frame one more time before leaving the bedroom and making my way down the hallway. There are pictures there, pictures of me and Spence, him and his mom, pictures of the team at work, Spencer won’t admit it often, but he wakes up every morning scared that he won’t remember those he loves, his mother’s dementia and schizophrenia have impacted him greatly. I stop in front of a picture of me and Spence, it’s the first picture we ever took together, Halloween almost 5 years ago now, at the FBI Halloween party.

October 2015

“Come on Y/n! How can you not love Halloween!”

“Spencer, what’s so great about Halloween!” I had asked laughing while filling up a plastic cup with punch. The party is fun, but all this dressing up just seems silly to me sometimes.

“It’s a uniquely American holiday! I mean, despite its obvious origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian All Saints’ Day, it really is a melting pot of various immigrants’ traditions and beliefs. It became a little more commercialized in the 1950s with trick-or-treat, and today it rivals only Christmas in terms of popularity!” I catch JJ’s eyes from across the room, she gives me a sympathetic look as I’m stuck in another of Reid’s constant statistics rants. Frankly, I don’t understand how the rest of the team can cut Reid off when he’s like this. He’s so genuinely excited by this holiday it makes my budding feelings for the man standing in front of me even stronger.

“Aw you guys look so cute! Say cheese!” the always-hyper voice of Penelope Garcia shouts from across the bullpen, snapping a quick picture of me and Spence before running after Derek. I glance down at my phone and see a text from Penelope “It doesn’t take a profiler to realize how gone you are for him Y/n” I blush profusely before continuing my conversation with Spencer.

Present day

Tearing my eyes away from that specific picture, I continue walking to the end of the hallway, painfully aware that the floorboards are squeaking with my every step, hoping Spencer’s just-finished-a-case level of exhaustion will prevent him from waking up. I pass the threshold into the kitchen and see the dim light of the clock over the stove, the red 2:15 blinking back at me through my tired eyes, I just can’t seem to get to sleep tonight, I’m sure Spencer would say something like

“Chronic insomnia is usually tied to an underlying mental or physical issue. Anxiety, stress, and depression are some of the most common causes of chronic insomnia but even if you do not suffer from chronic insomnia, 35% of Americans report their sleep quality as poor or only fair.” Dating a living encyclopedia definitely has its perks I suppose. I walk towards the fridge and glance at the refrigerator, my eyes traveling to a postcard held up by a doctor who magnet. Houston, Texas the postcard reads.

February 2017

Me and Spencer had been dating for less than 6 months but as we had known each other for over a year I was falling head over heels in love with him. The last few months hadn’t been easy, Spencer learned that his mother had been diagnosed with dementia and not a day had gone by where he didn’t try and find a cure, he had been traveling to Houston,Texas to talk with his mother’s doctor, he then brought her to live with him in Virginia, it had been difficult to say the least. My fingers traced the edges of the postcard I had received in the mail this morning, then flipped it over and saw Spencer’s familiar scraggly handwriting, it read

Dear Y/n,

I was able to speak with my mother’s doctors today, I feel as though there must be more I can be doing, she seems to be responding to the medicines but I am looking into new methods of treating the disease. I miss you so much Y/n, and I miss the rest of the team as well, tell them I will be back as soon as I can, I hate the thought of you putting yourself in danger on cases without me there, not because I doubt your ability to protect yourself, but because I doubt my ability to handle being 1,402 miles away from you. Please do not worry about me, if you’re anxiously awaiting my return, stop looking at the clock because remember, when looking at a clock our brains anticipate what we’ll see faster than we actually see it, so the clock seems to stop, Ill be back before you know it Y/n.

With all my love, Spencer Reid.

I giggle quietly at the added facts, only Spencer would describe the phenomenon of a clock appearing stopped when glanced out. I’m concerned about Spencer though, I’m not sure what is going on, but there is definitely something not right with him and if I didn’t trust him so much I would consider asking Garcia to do a background check to check the legitimacy of his travels to Houston.

Present Day

This postcard is extremely bittersweet, the next week we were all rushing to Mexico, responding to a call that Spencer was in jail, I was a nervous wreck, we all were, it was an extremely rough 6 months, truly showing me how strong the man I love is. I push some of those harsh memories out of my brain, choosing to focus on the happy memories if I ever want to fall asleep tonight. There’s a coffee machine next to the fridge, if there’s one thing Spencer loves more than me, its coffee, or rather coffee flavored sugar with the amount of sweetener he puts in his cup every day. Spencer smells like coffee, almost always, he struggles to sleep most nights and therefore is always hyped up on caffeine. It's actually played a huge role in our relationship.

August 2016

Dr. Spencer Reid and I are walking to the BAU together as we do every single day, we live close to each other, close enough that he walks about 5 minutes before arriving at my house, we then walk to the coffee shop on the way to the train station. We’re best friends, but I’ve been secretly in love with him for months. Walking into Quantico, we get the daily glances from Penelope, Derek, and JJ who are sitting together looking at pictures of Henry. Penelope always teases me that we’re both so in love with each other that everyone can see it but us, it’s ironic actually. As much as I don’t believe Pen, I have been noticing small changes in Spence’s behavior the last couple months, prompting me to, in the deepest corners of my mind, hope that maybe he feels the same way, our friendship is worth too much to risk him not feeling the same way though, so I’m forever stuck. We aren’t on a case right now, so there’s a lot of paperwork to be done, at one point during the day I get up, asking Spence if he wants another cup of coffee before walking to the break room. I return after a brief 5 minutes and am surprised to see Derek sitting in my seat, arguing with Spencer.

“Come on Pretty boy! We both know you’re in love with her! Just ask her out man, she’ll say yes!”

“Morgan, quiet down, she’ll be back any minute, besides I’m 35 and Y/n is 32, I’m not saying there would even be a chance that we would get married but the marriage success rate in the United States is only 50%, the worst it has ever been, that therefore shows the state of relationships in the country as well, I don’t want to ruin our friendship, I could never lose her. Besides, I’ve never been good with women.”

“But that’s the thing pretty boy, you don’t have to be good with women, you’re already good with Y/n, she’s the one who matters, just ask her out man, you’ll regret it if you don’t.” With that Morgan walks away and I take a deep breath, its now or never, walking over to Spencer and setting down the cup, whispering in his ear,

“You never know how good with women you are until you try, Spence” He looks up at me with wide eyes and licks his tongue across his lips, something he does often.

“Um, Y/n, y-you heard all of that?” I nod and I can see Spence take a deep breath just as I did before walking over, “W-would you like to um- go to dinner with me Y/n?”

“Hmm I don’t know…” Spencer’s face starts to fall as I quickly continue “Of course I would love to go to dinner with you silly, what did you think?” His smile lights up the entire room as he pulls me into a deep hug.

“Well finally you two. You couldn’t have waited just a few more months though, I assumed you lovebirds wouldn’t get it together until after Spencer’s birthday” Rossi says from behind us, passing a pretty hefty stack of bills to Penelope.

That was the day that started the greatest adventure of my life.

Present Day

I leave the kitchen and walk to the living room, a chilly breeze blows my hair slightly askew, its June in Virginia, warm enough that all I’m wearing is one of Spence’s oversized MIT shirts with pajama shorts, but the night air causes slight goosebumps on my skin, sending me into my memories once again.

August 2019

Spencer and I are sitting on the couch, participating in yet another Doctor Who marathon on the tv, it's a rare day off from work and the hot summer air fills our living room even with the fan blowing through the house. I lie my head in Spencer’s lap as we watch the tv and his strong hand strokes the back of my neck, causing goosebumps to pop up all over my arms. I giggle and glance up at him causing him to pointedly look at me asking me with his eyes “What is so funny that you dare distract from Doctor Who?”

“It’s just strange, its 95 degrees outside but your hands on my neck give me goosebumps like its a crisp fall day, isn’t that funny baby?”

“Of course the most common cause of goosebumps is cold weather, but when you’re experiencing extreme emotions, the human body responds in a variety of ways. Two common responses include increased electrical activity in the muscles just under the skin and increased depth or heaviness of breathing, resulting in goosebumps.” I roll my eyes at him and playfully swat his hair out of his eyes.

“Only you, Dr. Spencer Reid, would take a romantic statement and turn it into statistics, and I love you for that” he kisses me and well, the Doctor Who marathon was quickly turned off after that.

Present Day

As I turn the corner into the living room I smile warmly, it’s the room that Spencer and I like the best. There are book cases lining the back wall, Spencer loves books, I’d ask him what made his books so special and he’d tell me stories of his childhood, his mom reading him 15th century literature, I loved when Spence told me stories about his childhood.

December 2017

I knocked on the door of Spencer’s apartment, it wasn’t like him to be late for our daily walk to work especially because he had been on probation after his time in jail. I received no answer, prompting my concern as I unlocked the door with the key he had given me. I walked into his living room and saw him, Spencer was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by books, running his fingers up and down the pages as he does when he’s reading at his top speed.

“Spence what on earth are you doing! Where did all these books come from? We aren’t on a case are we?”

“This year in the United States alone there have been 328,259 new books published, I read at 20,000 words per minute but at an average of 100,000 words per book, it would take me 27,377 hours to read all those books!”

“Oh Spencer how I love you, you don’t need to read every book ever published, are you going to start reading romance novels?” I tease while picking up a copy of 50 Shades of Gray from the ground at Spencer’s feet.

“Okay maybe you’re right, I just feel like I missed so much time when I was incarcerated, all that reading I could’ve done when I was trapped in that place, it's time I can never get back.”

“Spencer, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you, but this is not going to help that feeling go away, let’s go to work.” Spencer nodded and began to tidy up the floor before following me out the door.

“Wait, Y/n, I have to ask you something that I’ve meant to say since I’ve gotten out of jail, and I might as well say it now, will you move in with me?” He’s chewing on his bottom lip again and I jump into his arms in excitement, kissing his hair as he caresses the back of my head.

“Of course I’ll move in with you! I love you, Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“And I love you Y/n Y/l/n.”

Present Day

I’m coming around to the opposite side of the living room now, sitting down on the couch in front of the fireplace. I love the fireplace in our house and I think secretly Spencer does too. We argued for days over the safety of having a fireplace in our house, Spencer of course supplied with enough knowledge of house fires to last him 5 lifetimes, “But Spencer it’ll be so cozy, doesn’t it sound romantic to cuddle up by the fire?” I had pleaded with him the day we toured the house for the first time.

“Y/n, there were an average of 357,400 residential fires per year in the US between 2012 and 2014, an average of 22,300 of those fires were caused by a fireplace or chimney!”

“But Spenceee, that’s only 6.24% of the residential house fires during that period, 43.9% were from cooking equipment, are you going to forbid us from having a kitchen too?” Hey, don’t underestimate how useful a cellphone calculator and a quick google search can be in winning an argument against your genius boyfriend. Obviously, we had ended up agreeing on the fireplace, but Spencer was still overly cautious whenever it was in use. As I stood in front of the fireplace I became hyper aware of the floorboards creaking in the hallway just as they had done when I left the room earlier, I felt a presence enter the room and the 6’1” frame of my boyfriend wrapped his long arms around me from behind while burying his face in the hollow of my shoulder.

“Hi, baby, what are you doing up so late? Are you feeling okay? Can’t seem to get to sleep?” I nod back at him and recline my head so it rests on his strong chest.

“I was just taking a trip down memory lane I suppose” I say before smiling up at the love of my life.

#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fluff #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #reader insert

[luciferist]

Hi! I love your blog c:

Can I please request a MC that has bad health/is sick and Jumin comfort and help her to feel better.

I would really appreciate that ♡

hi lovely !! sorry for the wait! thank you so much for requesting and saying that !! it means a lot :} and if this something personal to you, i’m wishing you the best <3 you’re in my heart, nonnie. love you!!

– jumin with a chronically sick mc

warnings – chronic illness, bad health, sickness

you were scared to tell him.

that you weren’t the smartest time investment. that maybe this relationship should just stop here. that you didn’t want him to regret being with you after finding out.

finding out that you’d take up a lot of time, a lot of taking care of, and a lot of pity.

you knew jumin was always a man focused on the most efficient method, the best possible way

sadly, that would never be you.

and so after the party was settled, you sat down with jumin in his penthouse

“jumin, before this relationship goes any further, there’s... there are some things you should know. i’ve never had a healthy body...” you went on to explain your health issues and what you’ve had to do in the past to combat them.

it took a good hour for you to tell him everything. and not once during those moments did jumin interrupt you or speak. he sat there right next to you with his hands clasped, listening like his life depended on it.

when you were finished, you were afraid of the way jumin hadn’t reacted at all, bracing yourself for the worst

and all at once, jumin brought you into his arms, your head fitting perfectly in the crook in his neck, pressing a loving kiss on the crown of your head

“_, you are so strong. it must have been so frightening going through this on your own. i am so proud of you, my love.”

your eyes welled up with tears.

nobody had ever said that to you. they only ever said “i’m so sorry” and “i feel so bad”.

never “i’m so proud of you.”

that night he held you for hours, basking in each other’s warmth

the next day, jumin made it very clear to you he would never leave you, and if he did (to which he also made very clear would not happen if he could help it), it would never be because of your health

from that point on, jumin thought up all types of precautions to make sure to always be there just in case something happened

he hired an in-house physician, he began to work from home much more often, and he always asked you how you were feeling every morning

if you call, even if he’s in a meeting, he’ll pick up no later than ten seconds after the tone starts ringing

will rarely go on business trips after this. it does affect his business poorly, but jumin will either send jaehee or another exec, he’ll bring you with him, or he’ll video call. worst case scenario would be if your health suddenly turned for the worst and he couldn’t be there for you, so he’s trying to prevent that.

if you have dietary restrictions or any accommodations you need, best believe he has that all covered. and you only owned the most trusted and expensive health products/medicines/tools from then on

also hired more help around the house so you could rest comfortably

it was a lot but you thought it was so sweet how much attention he paid to your health. jumin could have just brushed it aside and proceeded with your relationship like normal, but he was always at your beck and call, giving you whatever you needed. you felt like royalty.

most days it wasn’t too bad. you were able to do everyday things like going to school/work/doing house chores (well, the ones you could sneak in, that is)

but those days when your body just felt so heavy, so tired, not wanting to listen to you... well, they were harder. both for you and for jumin.

when that happened, jumin would work at home the entire time, until you could convince him you were actually better.

he’d work in the same room as you’d be resting in– no, scratch that, he’d work right next to your bed

other than the house physician, a team of physicians would be outside 24/7 switching shifts just in case any drastic changes happened

same thing if you had to go to the hospital – you’d be in a suite in the best hospital in the city with a large room so jumin could sleep there with you

on those rare times where hope was too far for him to even see, jumin shed tears, praying that you’d recover quickly

you always did. he’s still so grateful.

he’ll spend his days treating you like a delicate flower, whether you like it or not

you both have to stay strong for each other. it’s a thorny path, but jumin is more than willing to take it with you

you feel bad sometimes, for making him work a second job taking care of you, but he’s never felt angry or burdened. he tells you this every time.

“my sweet, there is no greater honor i could receive than being able to be the one to take care of you. you’re an angel who i was blessed to meet.”

he always told you that you were his angel, but it was funny.

jumin had always been yours.

this was very heart-wrenching to write T___T well this is a bit tmi but personally, i have a lifelong illness/condition, so it was interesting to think of how i’d react telling jumin and what measures he would take to care of me. nevertheless, thank u for reading !!!

#mystic messenger #mysme #mystic messenger headcanons #jumin han #jumin #jumin headcanons #mystic messenger jumin #lili writes

[wickedmilo]

SOUNDS LIKE A YOU PROBLEM | MILO & CHLOE

PLACE: A dive bar TIMING: 10:49 PM SUMMARY: After realising he has run out of money, Milo approaches Chloe and asks her to pay for his drinks. WRITING PARTNER: @chloeinbetween ​ CONTENT WARNINGS: Addiction, alcohol, references to emotional abuse, drug manipulation (Leanan-Sidhe kiss), chronic illness

There were a lot of things Chloe hadn’t done for years, banned because the only thing allowed to be a detriment to her health was the fae feeding on her. There were a lot of things she wasn’t supposed to do now either, against medical advice or the general opinions of the town on what wasn’t and wasn’t safe. Drinking a glass of whiskey by herself in a bar that was too dingy to have a crowd on a weeknight probably fell into all of the above. Which was why she was doing it. Her fingers drummed against the sticky linoleum of the bar, looking at messages on her phone that she had no plan of answering. Her old messaging app had kept all the old messages from before she’d been taken, so in her worst moments she scrolled through the texts she’d received demanding to know where she was, and why she’d abandoned them. 

It was hardly surprising in pits like this that she didn’t notice the young man sidling up to her curiously. Not until he was much too close. “Can I help you?” Chloe asked, looking him up and down. 

Until very recently, Milo had no reason to concern himself with boundaries. The circles he usually ran in had far more important things to worry about, like who had the drugs, and where they were going to use them. He was too used to stumbling, getting close to strangers, or sharing paraphernalia with people he didn’t recognise. Being forced to avoid people, Humans, was new. A habit he was being forced to form. That didn’t mean his other habits, the ones he had been establishing for years, weren’t demanding his attention though. Which was why he had made his way over to a quiet bar, a bar he knew didn’t often draw in the crowds. As depressing as it was to drink alone in a shadowy corner, that’s exactly how he had been spending his night. Up until the moment he had reached into his pocket for the crushed bills he usually kept there and realised they were no longer present. He shouldn’t be surprised, he had been handing them over for hours. But everybody knew running out of money was anxiety inducing, even when you didn’t have habits to maintain. 

His bank account was empty, that had been the last of it. He wasn’t stupid enough to assume he counted wrong when he had withdrawn the remainder of his funds. And he hadn’t been to work since his official time of death. He could make a run for it, but even in his inebriated state he knew being chased down and potentially tackled by a bartender would only end in said bartender being drained of blood. There didn’t seem to be many options ahead of him. So instead of eyeing the door, he began to eye his fellow patrons. It was very easy to single out the person least likely to punch him in the face, and he pushed himself out of the booth he had been slouching in, getting far too close before he could hold himself back. His limbs felt heavy, his entire body clumsy, and uncoordinated. But he pushed on. “Yeah, actually-” He insisted, a familiar rush of longing creeping up on him as her scent began to permeate the space. Taking a hesitant step back, he swallowed his craving, willing himself to stay where he was. “You can pay for my drinks.” Maybe it wasn’t the smoothest way of asking the woman for money, but his brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity and pathetically, it was the best he could do. Maybe she would take pity on him. “I mean- I’ve probably had the worst fucking month of my life, and I… shit, I mean I have no money. What do you want me to say?”

“Excuse me?” Chloe replied, twisting in her seat to look him over. There was a buzz in her head, but it did nothing to numb the immediate annoyance at his request. If anything, it removed any social insecurity, Chloe was no longer interested in being careful with her words. A fae would be more eloquent than that anyway. She pushed her drink further onto the counter so that she would not knock it, and looked him up and down. There was a loose, chaotic way of his movements, like he didn’t quite know how to hold himself together. He was drunk, drawling, obviously. Her lip curled in disgruntled annoyance. “Why the hell are you at a bar if you haven’t got any money?” Chloe snapped back, looking right back up at him. 

“I really don’t see how that’s anyone’s problem except yours. And the bartender’s. How disrespectful do you need to be to expect something like this from other people?” She rolled her eyes pointedly at him. There was another thought, biting at the corner of her mind, after another moment of looking at him, the sentence slipped out before she could stop herself. “Can’t have been too shitty a month if you still have the capacity to make bad life choices.”

Milo knew the moment the woman turned to face him that she wasn’t about to hand over her credit card. Even if it hadn’t been obvious in her tone, it would have been obvious in the way she was looking at him. Letting out a huff of breath in response to the question, it was a sharp reminder of how important it was to take shallow breaths. He didn’t need the oxygen, and breathing in too deeply was only going to put her in danger. Each intake brought with it a wave of tantalising scent. “I had money.” He countered, an edge to his own voice. “I drank it.” Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he would do if somebody approached him and asked him to pay for their drinks. Maybe in the morning her reaction would feel reasonable, and valid. Right now though, in this moment, it was infuriating. It didn’t make any sense. 

“And it isn’t disrespectful to be a total dick when somebody asks you for help?” He demanded, twisting the situation to frame himself as someone to sympathise with, someone to feel sorry for. He fell silent again, his eyes narrowing as she carefully observed him. Even with so much alcohol in his system, it made him feel vulnerable, and exposed. He didn’t like it. Shifting awkwardly on the spot, he felt a spark of genuine anger when she eventually commented on his life choices. Did he really look that bad? “Oh, yeah?” He snapped. “You’re here drinking alone too, you know? Seems like we’re both making shitty decisions. I’d like to see anybody go through what I’ve been through and not want to drink themselves into oblivion. Haven’t you ever heard of coping mechanisms? Fucking crutches? Maybe I just need a fucking break.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Chloe replied, matching his edge just as harshly, even though her voice croaked with the effort. There was a way he looked at her that made her skin crawl, like he knew more about her than he should, or that he wanted more than her money. Perhaps what was left of her life, she though, and shook the thought away. He didn’t have the charisma to be like Lydia. He was pitiable. Still a threat, maybe, but under her anger she understood just want this looked like. 

There was a knife edge difference between drinking to cope and drinking to lose herself, and Chloe was terrified of landing the wrong edge of the line. 

Then he opened his mouth again and her sympathy was quashed immediately. “Only if they’re not a dick in asking for it. You didn’t even ask! You demanded. You look young but not too young to know the difference.” If nothing, her barbed comment only seemed to raise his hackles even further, his voice raising. Her hands curled tightly around the edge of the barstool. “I’m not pissing off anyone else though, am I? I don’t think you’re in a place to throw rocks, dude. Oh fuck off, do you really think you have a monopoly on suffering?”

Milo glared at the woman, irritated by the tone she was taking although he had a feeling he might look back on this conversation and feel it was entirely justified. “I’m trying to make it an us problem.” He muttered, thinking of every time Dani had ever called him a smartmouth. “I didn’t ask for shit.” He added, his glare only growing in intensity. Clearly it had been a mistake to approach her. She must have known he was likely going to ask her for money regardless of how she chose to begin their initial interaction, but technically he was being honest. “You asked if you could help me, and I said yes, you could pay for my drinks. If anything, you offered.” 

Noting her voice growing in volume, the last thing he wanted to do was cause a scene. But he also felt as though he had every right to be angry. He hadn’t done anything wrong. “I didn’t come over here to piss you off. I actually have better things to do.” He snapped, running a clumsy hand through his hair as he struggled to reign in his frustration. “You know what? Yeah, I really fucking do have the monopoly on suffering right now. Why do you think I’m even here? I had friends, and a fucking family, and I’m really fucking tired. So forgive me for not realising I was nearly out of cash. And forgive me for thinking that maybe someone might actually take pity on me and offer to help me out. It’s whatever, okay? I’ll fucking go-” 

“I’ll remember next time to be clearer with my sarcasm as you don’t seem to get it. I fucking doubt that,” Chloe snarled back, eyes creased in a frown, back straight. She couldn’t say whether it was the alcohol or the attitude that was giving her a headache, but she was pretty sure he was the problem either way. But somewhere in his furious tirade, Chloe heard the hints of something that… well, nothing justified treating people shittily, but something awful, something Chloe understood a little too well. 

No friends. No family. Alone in a dark place with an unhealthy coping mechanism and a need to drown your thoughts in a buzz. Chloe hadn’t had access to alcohol for the last few years, but… well, there had been something available to take the edge off. Chloe shivered. “Wait.” She said curtly, jaw flexing, unable to believe she was about to say this. Maybe because in the biting harshness of his features she saw snippets of Todd and Sammy, young lost men who had found the wrong source of comfort in their troubled lives. Chloe already knew it was fantastical to think she could fix things, but if there was a kindness to be offered…. On the other hand, he was an asshole who had pissed her off, so she almost let him walk away just to teach him a lesson. “Just this once, okay? So you don’t end up in jail on top of whatever other shit you have going on. Now get the hell out of here.”

“Maybe don’t engage strangers in conversation and you won’t have to.” Milo countered. She had spoken to him first. He wasn’t about to take responsibility for something that wasn’t his fault. He was just turning to leave, his hands balled into fists, when he heard the woman call out to him. Surprised, but too irritated to show any gratitude, he faced her once again, a frown still fixed firmly in place. He hadn’t been expecting her to change her mind, and he was in too bitter a mood to be honest about just how much the gesture meant. Taking the bills she was handing out to him, he was careful to only take the amount he needed, leaving a few of them behind. There were other ways to find money if he became desperate. Right now, it seemed like the very least he could do to acknowledge she was offering him help. Crumpling them in his hand, he sheepishly caught her eye. He knew he should say thank you, but he was stubborn. Too stubborn to admit he might have been unfair to her. So he left, instead. Without saying another word. Maybe one day he might feel guilty about that fact, but it wasn’t as though he was ever going to see her again. Something, he thought, that might very well be for the best.

#addiction tw #alcohol tw #emotional abuse tw #drug manipulation tw #chronic illness tw #milo & chloe #alcohlism tw #c:chloe

[starculler]

Whumptober 2021: Day 10

Word Count: 3042 || Read on AO3

Tags/Warnings: Dragon Age, Hawke, Violence, Chronic Pain/Illness, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Vaguely Hopeful Ending, Blood and Injury

Me projecting my own chronic pain/illness on a beloved character? It's more likely than you'd think!

Hawke wakes with pain in his hands — a few fingers swollen but not numb, and his wrists nearly stiff as boards. He groans, wishing he could scrub his hands over his face in to help wake him from pervasive exhaustion that clings to him, and settles instead for rolling slowly out of bed. It’s not the worst he’s ever felt, not by far, but he can tell from the moment he wakes that it’s a warning pain. The first signs of a flare bubbling up to the surface with promises of greater pain to follow. Slowly if he’s lucky. Quick if he’s not.

He curses, padding barefoot across the bedroom to a small bookcase no taller than he is next to a short table he uses on late nights. Reaching for a shelf at chest height, he plucks one of a dozen bottles of the same pale red potion. It isn’t a healing potion, not exactly, but his own concoction meant to soothe the chronic aches, pains, and inflammation that plague him. It helps, too, that his version is sweeter going down than the regular recipe, a boon considering he drinks a half-portion every morning. He knows he’ll have to replace it sooner rather than later, it’s effectiveness already halved not halfway through the year, but he’ll make do until he can spare the time to tamper with the recipe.

Not that he’s looking forward to the tedium, despite how he knows each tweak gets a little closer to something that might work for him permanently. Hope for the future, after all, does little to soothe him in the transition from one recipe to the next when his every joint feels as though it’s been lit aflame. As if even the slightest movement might finally be the one to shatter him.

The bitter tang of frustration on his tongue at the thought might be familiar, but he loathes it all the same whenever it rears its ugly head. At least, he thinks as he putters about the room and gets ready for the day, failure means trouble only for him. No dead or dying bodies required. Stressful, yes, but not nearly so much as the weight of being Champion to Kirkwall has brought down on his shoulders.

Or, it had.

He’s quite content in his hiding, though his friends keep him as informed as they can through both letters and the occasional visit. That brings the day’s first smile to his lips, a tiny twitch of the lips that quickly spreads into a grin when he hears the impatient call of the mabari that had claimed a place in his home. The ugly runt of a mutt wastes no time doing its best to knock him over as soon as he’s opened his bedroom door, and he laughs as he bends with only a mild grumble to pet its head. It whines, butting its head hard into his palm and he winces as it jars some of the stiffness still clinging to the joints.

“Maker, but I swore that potion used to work faster,” he grouses and the little hound snorts in response. “Perhaps you’re right,” he says, standing to lead them both down the hall to the small kitchen for an early morning meal. “I’m losing my touch in retirement. Fenris and Aveline would agree, I’m sure, not that my withering skills should mean much to hound living off scraps and handouts, should it Brinna?”

Brinna ignores the arch tone in his voice as she spins in place, eager for some of the eggs and sausage he’s cooking up for himself. He sighs, put upon, but puts half of what he’s made into her bowl regardless. Once the food’s eaten and the dishes washed, the bulk of the day’s work begins, his pain lessened but always there in the back of his mind.

It starts in the fields, not nearly as large as the farm he’d grown up on but more than enough for him to live on and sell the excess of whatever he grows. Mostly grains, with a space for vegetables and herbs set aside. Brinna frolics while he works, ignoring the weight of his tools and the slight strain in his shoulder that crops up as the sun crawls across the sky. By midday he’s done what he can and calls his companion over for a break: a brief nap in the shade of a two flowering fruit trees he’d been gifted by a neighbor grateful to him for taking care of a minor spider problem.

After that and a quick midday meal, he sets his sights on a few chores he’s let pile up: airing out sheets and laundering his clothes, mainly. He’s managed to drag it all out to take down to the sluggish river just over the rise, hissing curses as the effort pulls sharply at one of his elbows, when Brinna breaks the pleasant silence with a low, guttural growl. The sudden sound pulls him up short, and he snaps upright quick as any battle-ready warrior only to blink at the sight in front of him, brows furrowed.

A kid stands at the edge of his field, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Behind them stands a larger man, younger than Hawke, with a hoe in hand and a scowl marring an otherwise youthful face. Siblings, he thinks as he pats Brinna’s flank twice and her growl cuts off with a happy wiggle. Perhaps a very young parent. He meets them halfway and comes no closer, Brinna a protective shadow at his side. The man breaks quickly under his stare, even and neutral though it may be.

“You’re Hawke, right?” The man takes a half-step closer and Hawke can just make out the desperate, hopeful look carved into the few lines on his face. A pit drops in his stomach when the man adds on a second later, “Kirkwall’s champion?”

“Depends,” he says even though what he really wants to do is deny it and let Brinna chase them off. He knows news of him has spread since even before he left Kirkwall, but he’d hoped it hadn’t traveled so far. Not that anyone, divine or mortal, has much cared for what he wants, content to throw him to the wolves even when he tries to avoid trouble.

The kid mouths something too low for him to hear, eyes wide in what he hopes is awe and not fear, but the man is quick to draw his attention once more when he says: “You can help then? With the-the creatures, whatever they are.”

“Creatures?”

The man nods and points up at the big, bright green tear in the sky that Hawke’s done his best to ignore for the week it’s been there, hovering and ominous. Even looking at it makes his skin crawl, magic sparking at his fingertips the way it hasn’t since he was a child. The whole thing stinks of the Fade and has made sleep that much harder for him — calling to him to it at night despite how he’s never been a Dreamer. He’s not used to having to guard himself at night, the exhaustion and his unexpected flare proof enough that the tear’s doing more than just sitting idly over Thedas, though it hasn’t been a problem that’s called to him until now.

“Never seen anything like them,” the man says, hushed. As if speaking of them is enough to draw them here. Hawke raises a brow, saying nothing. “Taller’n anything I’ve seen and thin. Long tails too, and green. Looks right out of a nightmare, and came right out of a smaller tear hovering about head-height off the ground. I’d never seen anything like it, and it wasn’t alone either.”

Hawke swallows, the pit in his stomach sinking just a fraction further down, and asks: “What else?” The man shrugs.

“I recognized the shades, two of them, but also some little green lights hovering around — like little men with no feet.” He pauses and looks Hawke right in the eye when he follows up with: “Can you help?”

“Yeah. I can’t promise anything more than to try, but yes,” Hawke says after a long, tense moment and sighs. The pair of strangers sag regardless, all but falling to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.

“Thank you,” the man says, voice thick with emotion and Hawke just waves him off and watches them leave after they’ve given him directions to the source of their problem and a few words more exchanged about what, exactly, has happened. Two dead and four wounded is, he supposes, reason enough to go searching for a Champion made of more rumor than fact, no thanks to Varric of course.

Brinna whuffs at his side, pressing her bulk against his leg until he lowers himself slowly to the ground. She wastes no time crawling into his lap the second he’s comfortably sat in the dirt, as mellow as she is on his worst days when the pain keeps him in bed for hours until he can brace himself for the arduous task of hobbling across his room for a stronger draught he uses occasionally. He stays there for a while — minutes or hours, he can’t tell — uncomfortably familiar with the fact that a bit of lost time won’t make much difference. The monsters are rarely gone before he arrives.

Hawke-family luck at its finest.

The sun’s not yet set by the time he sets out in his full kit: mismatched bits of leather and steel armor, thick leather and battle-worn cloth he’ll have to replace eventually — should have before he left but had found himself feeling oddly sentimental — and his staff at his back. He looks every inch the Champion he left behind even if he’s had to replace most of what he’d worn then, and has to swallow the acidic resentment that crawls up his throat.

He shoves any unproductive thoughts out of his mind, choosing instead to think of Brinna left home alone, too old and too small to be much help in a fight, and the hastily written letter left behind for whoever among his friends actually manages to show up. They’d planned this night for months, letters delivered back and forth between them in a frenzy until they’d figured out a date that suited most of them. He’d planned to be there when they arrived — if they arrived — but he supposes Brinna will have to be welcoming party enough.

Night has fallen by the time he arrives, cresting a hill just in time to see the wavering, eerie, green glow of what indeed turns out to be the sky’s tear in miniature surrounded by demons. Five, he counts, and feels his magic spark and skitter against his skin, familiar and soothing. He wishes he had people at his back, but he’s fought alone before. He’s not about to make himself a coward now.

He pulls his staff free from his back, lets his magic run out through his palms and up into its cool, twisting, metal frame to charge the gem at its head. He winces at a brief jolt of power that briefly numbs his wrist and frowns. The tear’s made it just as hard to properly control the output of his magic as it has to sleep. This close to even a smaller version of it, exposure to the Fade directly regardless of size, doubles the difficulty. He’ll have no issue casting, he knows, but too much power poured into a spell has backfired on him before.

As if he needs the reminder, his shoulder throbs and he has to bite back a hiss at even the dull, radiating pain. He focuses on fixing his grip on his staff, a little clumsy with the swelling, and takes a deep breath in before blowing it all back out. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to move much after this, not when heavier use of his magic has only aggravated the illness eating away at his mobility, so he simply doesn’t think about. Pushes the worries to the back of his mind and focuses on the floating, green specter closes to him.

He doesn’t get close, hoping the high ground will give him an advantage in a five-on-one fight and is quickly proved right when the specter dissipates after three fiery blasts from his staff. The warmth crawls teasingly up his arm, exacerbating the uncomfortable warmth of the swelling in his fingers, but he gets little time to think on it as he loses his advantage. One of the tall, green monsters springs up out of the ground from a rippling, green-glowing circle and swipes at him.

Hawke dodges, falling into a roll to jump back onto his feet without injury. He fires two blasts that seem to do nothing at all, grits his teeth and powers up the first spell he ever learned: Fireball. The creature shrieks and staggers, but he has no time to gloat when the shade makes its way to him. One of its claws snags on his leather vest, but this demon, at least, is familiar. He casts a hasty petrification spell that freezes it in place and follows up with a volley of simple blasts that takes it down.

He grunts when a blast of green energy hits him square in the back, sending a brief shock of pain rippling up every vertebra. Biting back a shout, he whirls and dispatches the second ghostly shape just as quickly as he had the first. The second shade goes down next, but by then he’s panting. Sweat plasters his hair to his face and the week he’s spent without proper rest makes itself known in the extra weight to his limbs.

He’s too slow to dodge the curling, green claw that tears through his arm. He screams, stumbling back even as he brandishes his staff with his other hand. The metal length trembles obviously, the magic he’s used locking the delicate joints up until he wants to yell from the pain and frustration.

He uses it instead.

Anger isn’t always an appropriate conduit, but it fucking works. A giant stone fist cobbles itself together in front of him and speeds off toward the creature. It screeches, loud and piercing, and then wilts and dissolves into what he thinks is ash. He nearly falls over in relief, and doesn’t swallow his whimper when the sudden rush of relief brings with it an new awareness of his pain.

His arm burns like fire, bleeding freely where the creature tore through skin and muscle, all the way down to the bone. His staff drops from his hands, landing with a soft thud in the grass. His hand’s locked stiff, fingers curled in the shape the weapon, but the rest of his arm, at least can move. The rest of him is no better off.

One of his shoulders won’t rotate. His ankles are prickling points of pain in his boots, swollen thick enough that they push against stiff leather and he worries, a little irrationally, that his very skin might split apart. His knees ache but he can move them. The pain radiates out from his joints, moving through the parts in between that shouldn’t hurt: his ribs, back, and neck protest as loudly as the rest of him.

The worst by far, however, is the horribly familiar fever burning through him, hot as his firestorm spell. It isn’t as bad as when his condition first came about, but it’s enough to knock him over.

He doesn’t even remember falling. He feels the pain of it, though, as it rips through him.

The fever and pain make it hard to think, but he manages to remember the supplies on his belt. He plucks a regular health potion from the assortment he’s brought with him and downs it eagerly. Desperately. He has to grit his teeth through the pain of his muscle and flesh knitting back together, but he’s had long years of practice with the feeling in Kirkwall. It’s almost negligible under the haze the pain in his joints pulls him under. A second gets knocked back quickly after to help finish the job, and then he’s rooting around for a paler elixir as tears prick at his eyes and wet his lashes.

He can’t curl his fingers around the vial when he finds it. The health potion’s fixed up his arm at a cost he’d nearly forgotten he’d have to pay. He chokes on a sob, half slumped over his lap as he paws at his belt, each bump sending an electric jolt of pain up his arm. He feels pathetic and wretched and wishing he’d brought Brinna if only so that she could rip the belt off and spill its contents to the floor.

He’s nearly got it when the earth shudders beneath him. His head snaps up without care for the sharp, shooting pain that makes its up from there and into his skull. For a moment, it doesn’t matter. Not the pain. Not the fever. Not the wretched sense of his own uselessness.

All that matters then, is the Pride demon that all but rips its way through the hovering, undulating tear mere minutes — minutes! Has it truly only been minutes? — after the last creature falls.

Fear clogs his throat, icy and all consuming as it spreads down into the core of him. He can’t fight a pride demon, not alone. Not like this. He swallows, his mouth dry, and watches numbly as the demon turns its head first one way and then the other until its gaze lands firmly on him. For a moment, charged and electric, there is stillness. Silence.

The demon roars.

Hawke scrambles to his feet, desperate and choking on his own pain as he forces his body to move. Nausea curls around his stomach, twisting it into tight knots as he hobbles-limps-runs as fast as he can, knowing it’s not fast enough. It will never be fast enough.

The last thing he hears before he tumbles head-over-heels into the sweet embrace of darkness, is the crackle of electricity and a vaguely familiar chorus of voices screaming his name.

#whumptober2021 #no.10 #flare up #dragon age #hawke #male hawke #fic #violence #blood #injury #chronic pain #chronic illness #my fanfic

[thebrainfogblog]

How I was diagnosed with IIH.

I’ve lived with an invisible illness for 9 years now. I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension in 2011. It’s a rare neurological condition that mimics all the symptoms of a brain tumour, in the absence of the actual tumour. This is my experience of getting diagnosed.

How it all began:

My first symptom was a constant headache, especially under fluorescent lights, while I was shopping. I passed it off as a migraine at first but it persisted for a while. I started to notice my vision was a bit blurry while I was reading and my eyes were tired and heavy. I thought I was just tired. I had found myself sleeping a lot and still feeling like I needed more rest.

One morning I woke up and I could hear my heartbeat “swooshing” loudly in my right ear. It was a loud roar that drowned out a lot of other sounds. It was extremely difficult for my brain to ignore. I couldn’t sleep and it started to drive me mad after just a day or two, so I booked an appointment with my GP.

A week later, after many sleepless nights, I went to my appointment. My GP did a quick examination of my ears and rushed me out of his office after 5 minutes with a nasal spray for a “sinus infection”, despite me telling him I had been experiencing blurry vision. He told me to come back in a week if I wasn’t feeling better.

I returned a week later, feeling no better and even more irritable due to a lack of sleep and constant headaches. He didn’t have any answers for me and told me to visit the opticians to have my eyes checked, because there was nothing more he could do. He offered no explanation for the tinnitus in my ear. 

I visited the opticians, expecting to be told I needed glasses and that’s probably what was causing my headaches. The opticians did their exam and took some photos of the back of my eyes/my optic nerves. They noticed that they were pale and swollen which is not normal. The optician spoke with her manager, who sat me down and kindly told me that my optic nerves looked unusual, and that she didn’t want to scare me, but she recommended that I go down to A&E immediately for some further scans. 

I tried to remain calm but honestly I was terrified. She wrote on the form that she gave me “papilledema”. So I frantically googled it while I was on my way to A&E. It said that it was a symptom of a brain tumour. I felt totally numb. Could this be what was causing my headaches? Was I about to be diagnosed with a brain tumour? 

I handed the form in to the A&E staff at my nearest hospital and within minutes, I was whisked away by a Doctor for a blood test and a CT scan. After an hour or so, I was told that the CT scan was clear and showed no signs of a tumour, which was a huge relief. It did however, still leave me wondering what was wrong. I was sent to the Eye Hospital a week later to have my pupils dilated and to have a Lumbar Puncture. 

The Lumbar Puncture required me to lie in the supine position for about an hour and a half, perfectly still, with my knees curled up to my chest, while a Doctor inserted a large hollow needle into the space between my two lower vertebrae, through my spinal membrane and into my spinal canal. I had a lot of local anaesthetic to numb the area, but as the Doctor was having to “go in blind”, I would experience painful electric shock sensations down my legs if he was too far left or right, and accidentally hit nerves, which happened a few times before he was successful. 

He attached a manometer to the needle which showed the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Normal ranges in healthy adults are about 8-15mm Hg when in the supine position. My CSF shot up through the tube and all over the room, and the pressure was sitting at over 58mmHg, but they couldn’t tell how much more, as the manometer only went so high. 

There was so sign of infection in my CSF, so with the diagnosis of papilledema and high intracranial pressure, in the absence of a tumour or any other sign of infection or disease, I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension. 

They explained that they didn’t know what causes it, but it could be linked to weight, hormones, excess vitamin A, birth control or a number of other factors, but there wasn’t enough evidence or research yet to say for certain.

I was given Acetazolamide, a diuretic, to try and bring the pressure down. After the Lumbar Puncture, I was told go to home and lie flat for a few hours. Often after an LP, you can suffer a bad headache, and lying flat can help avoid this.

I went home and went to sleep. A few hours later, I woke up in excruciating pain. Honestly, it was some of the worst pain I have ever felt. I couldn’t sit upright, even a little, without feeling like my brain was being pulled downwards. The pain was so bad that I could not stop projectile vomiting and shaking. I called NHS24 who called an ambulance for me and brought me to the hospital. I was given some medications and made to lie flat while they did some further testing. I was told that due to the CSF spurting out of the manometer, and being used to such a high amount of pressure in my skull, I was experiencing my first “Low Pressure” headache. It was only relieved by lying flat and no painkillers, even morphine, would touch the pain. Thankfully, CSF regenerates, so within a few hours, I was feeling better, and by next day, I was back in high pressure again. High pressure headaches are awful, but in my experience, Low pressure headaches are indescribable. 

After I had a bad reaction to Acetazolamide, I was then given Furosemide to try. It did nothing to help the pressure. Then I was given Topiramate, which gave me panic attacks and suicidal thoughts out of the blue. It made me feel borderline psychotic, which is a rare side effect, but completely out of the ordinary for me. I was told to come off it immediately and then told that I was out of options as far as medication went. 

My eyesight was deteriorating pretty rapidly. I was losing my peripheral vision and was like a horse with blinders on. Then I started to experiences floaters and my blind spots were getting bigger. I went for fortnightly eye tests and each time, my vision was a little worse. One morning, I woke up to find myself completely blind for about a minute. I opened my eyes, sat up and realised, everything was black, but I touched my hand to my eyes and realised my eyes were actually open. I panicked, and reached for my phone, but realised it was a touch screen and I couldn’t see to type any numbers on it to call anyone and I was all alone. 

My vision returned a minute or so later and I contacted my Neuro -Ophthalmologist who told me that was a Transient Visual Obscuration. A temporary blacking out of vision due to high pressure. He was increasingly concerned about my prognosis due to the medication being ineffective. I had an appointment where he told me he wanted to do brain surgery, to place a Ventricular-Peritoneal Shunt. It’s like an overflow pipe, a catheter with one end that sits in the ventricles of my brain and a tube that runs down my head, neck and chest down to my abdominal cavity. The excess fluid drains and helps to regulate the excess pressure in my skull.

A few months later I had the surgery and it was somewhat successful. It helped to stop my visual loss and stop the extremely irritating tinnitus. It didn’t however, manage to stop my headaches, which have persisted to this day. Some days are worse than others, but I now have migraines and shunt headaches on top of it. Sudden changes or large, quick drops in atmospheric/barometic pressure, cause intense headaches that can last for days and I happen to live in a place where it always rains.

For six months after surgery, The catheter poked me in my lower abdomen when I moved a certain way and caused sharp, excruciating pains. My head was tender in places and numb around where the shunt was placed at the front of my right temple and behind my right ear. 

It’s now 9 years later and although I feel lucky that my vision has been saved, I am left with chronic fatigue, weakness, dizziness, nausea, headaches and a constant brain fog, among other things. I am not the same person I was. Living with chronic pain changes you and living with an invisible illness is so tough. Having to explain to people why you need to cancel plans or why you have to spend yet another day in bed (when you’d rather be doing anything else) really grinds you down. 

Many people are sympathetic, but for every person who tries to understand, there’s someone else telling you to just “take a paracetamol” or that “they get migraines too”. Don’t get me wrong, Migraines are awful and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, but the headaches I have aren’t even really headaches as such. It’s head pain. It’s the feeling of pressure pushing on my brain and my skull with nowhere to go, it’s my head feeling too heavy for my body and constantly throbbing with every heartbeat. Every bit of exertion or exercise or coughing or straining makes it worse. 

I’m now hypersensitive to lights and sounds, more than ever before. I get overhwhelmed in crowds, shops and places where there is a lot of background noise. I struggle to walk more than a few feet without the nerves in my back seizing up due to botched Lumbar Puncture attempts.

Despite all of that. The hardest part about it all is trying to remain positive. Nobody wants to be around someone who has nothing nice to say. Someone who just complains or moans all the time. Some days it’s so hard to find anything positive to say, that I just don’t say anything at all. 

Other days, I fight hard to seem normal and capable and try to be like my old, happy self. Then I am exhausted and spend the next few days in bed because I have been pushing myself harder than I should. 

No two days are the same. Despite my best intentions, my plans can be ruined at the last second. I won’t know how bad my day will be until I wake up. I can’t plan ahead. I have to take every moment as it comes and hope for the best.

This illness has taught me many things. I know what I value in life and I know to make sure to tell those who I love, just how much I appreciate them and the things they do for me. I know to cut out the people in my life that have made no effort to understand or ridiculed or belittled me because they don’t care and never did. I know not to take anything for granted. I know to be kind because you never know what somebody is going through under the surface. I know that despite all of the pain and sadness I have felt, that I am grateful to be alive. Even if my life did not turn out quite how I had planned, I can take these lessons and experiences and hopefully use them to help others who are scared or facing the same uncertainty.

At the end of the day, these are the cards that I have been dealt. I can accept that now. It has taken me a long time to get to this point where I can share my story with all of you. 

I hope to connect with other people suffering from Chronic pain and other conditions. Let’s share our stories and create an environment of support, love and inclusion. 

Thanks for reading my story. 

#idiopathic intracranial hypertension #iih #spoonie #neurological disease #neurological disorder #pseudotumor cerebri #vpshunt #cerebralshunt #iihwarrior #chronic pain #fatigue #headache #headpain #surgery #nhs #neurology #diagnosis #cerebrospinal fluid #csf #lumbar puncture #diamox #furosemide #topamax #brain surgery #brain #eyesight #optic nerves #papilledema #shunt

[mamacleo]

Personal from Mom: the Good Bad Day

CW/TW: Physical distress leading to medium-duty progress, change, adaptation, and growth. Also spiritual stuff. CW: Really damned long. Sorry. I know, it's a chore, but if you follow me and Callie, you know how deeply layered a lot of this stuff is. Nothing extraneous is in there, though, I promise. You know I love labels. Like my winter distress, once called the Winter Monsters, now referred to (for accuracy) as the winter terrors. People who've known me since way back when have seen me struggle with labeling myself. They would tell me not to, and I couldn't really phrase it at the time, but what I needed to say was: no, please, don't ask me to redefine myself according to your perceptions of validity. Please accept that I am like this and help me work through it. So I want a label for the kind of day I am having today. I've been getting them more and more often without my having to try. For lack of anything catchier, I am labeling it a Good Bad Day. The word order is important! It means that there is also such a thing as a Bad Good Day, but they aren't the same. This isn't a gripe day, but this girl is just reporting. I think it's one of my bad pain days, one of those where all the weed in the world won't help. Maybe not that bad, but you may have read my description of the pain at its worst: it literally feels like each and every nerve-laden cell in your body is trapped in a vise and being crushed. Chronic pain sufferers know this day. It's that day where you cannot imagine making yourself move, yet you have to get to the bathroom SOMEhow, and ain't nobody gonna fix your coffee for you. So you do. You wake up in negative spoon territory and somehow you do it, even if "it" comprises only going to the bathroom. Now, I do have an emotional alarm clock, two actually, and their names are Adorable and Rosie. As I told my beautiful bride today, Adorabe gets this look when she realizes when, like today, only one hand is busy, and look old lady, I don't CARE if you're laying on it, I KNOW you got two hands. Let's see the other. Every morning she runs in to wake me up and get attention, and even if it irritates me some mornings, she always wins me over. Rosie comes in next for her morning affection, and...that's the start of a Good Bad Day. I'll sum up because Constant Reader knows the details. There's the pain, and the pain brings weariness. Today's promised partly-sunny day in the 60s is now just the latest in a long couple of weeks of chilly cloudfests. I'm starting to get really tired of them. We're broke for a few days and we need a couple of things. (Luckily not immediate necessities, but.) Things need picked up a bit, but there's no energy for it. I wanted to grill today, but can't see it happening. . And yet, my mood is good. Not just agreeable, but positive. The progesterone, which my love calls my "chill pills," have become the last piece in a 60-year puzzle. Callie and I remembering us joking around last night, some silly humor and some bawdy humor. Me promising that if I feel up to it (I will), I will redesign some pages for her. Realizing that, you know, it's weird, but I actually LIKE bird and squirrel videos for cats. Having a couple funny observations and sharing them. Getting to pet the outside cat, Buddy, when I brought him his breakfast. Adorable is right next to me, napping. My writing skills are in great form today, and I said a couple of things that I felt were more well-written, more helpful than before. Having people reach out just to share this or that with me privately. Feeling content because yesterday, I redefined my purpose in life, and the situation in which we live, in a way that is both rewarding and helpful to my beloved bride. Because that redefinition might not have happened without the exact right intervention at the exact right moment by my pearl, my girl, myErie (Because this is important at the end, I'm gonna sum up what happened that was so bad, Erie had to call. An issue I thought was settled turned out not to be, and that was moving to Cleveland, my girl's home town that she

misses so much. There were levels of significance to it that I just plain couldn't see because of my privilege, but the Chauvin trial brought them all to the front for her. My episodes can be weird. In this case, everything was emotional, and there were some severe conflicts involving resisting some selfish motives while trying my best to look out for her. The emotional issues involved for me triggered my BPD, of course, and the bottom dropped out and I had a really, monstrously bad episode. I isolated badly and was so overwrought, Callie thought I was going to leave. Erie intervened, made perfect sense as always, and sat with us on the phone while we worked through it. Like that, everything is right again. I say again: I will walk in front of her in case of bullets.) , responded to my plea to adopt me (to get his food!) and he asked me if I wanted to be his daughter fo real. And I said yes. So really, my breath left me and I was alive with fear and hope at the same time, and I said: "Thanks, mom." She was more than okay with it. And...Mom has a mom. Mom didn't know how much she needed a mom until one day, this powerful soul, this woman namedLinda , said the exact right thing at the exact right time...and out of nowhere, the urge, the *need,* to say this knocked at the door and took my breath away. I don't exaggerate. The last time I felt this was when my Pop,Greg And yes. She really is a mom. She really is my mom. Just thinking about it takes my breath away again. I waited my entire life, wanting a mom who never existed. And then... See, she said a thing to me that struck me hard for two reasons, and it was not long after I transitioned. It was a picture of modeling a bodice dress and looking happy, and she said, "You have a powerful strength that I'm not sure you even see yourself." It struck me hard because she is not the first to have said this, and she and the first person to say it, when I was 19, are not the only ones who have said it. I capped that and kept it so I would never lose it, and in the hopes that one day I could show it to her and say, hey, I see it now. I'm living it now. It gets amazing sometimes. The other reason it struck me so hard was that, and if she wants to talk about this I would love her to, when I reads those words, I felt something. The other day I talked about the gestalt and the lack of physical distance, and how items and artifacts can be conduits for spirit. The internet is the same way. Someone's words on the screen can be a conduit for your spirits to connect, and I felt it at the time and knew it was a different one than the other spiritual connections. The thing she said, others have said to me, but the thrill that took my breath away was that I could feel her faith. The boss who said that to me when I was 19, he had an expression that was, now that I reflect on it, quite possibly the trigger, THE moment, that things turned around. Because he was the first person to express faith in me. I mean, really, upon examination, I remember people encouraging me, but he was the first one to express faith in me. Damn, I wish I could find him and rock his world. That was what Linda said, too. Across the miles, I felt her faith. Yes, mom, I am going to say it right out loud in case I'm not being clear: you made a difference in my life. I called you mom, and that was where it started. You made my hope grow. (ASIDE: Ahh, it is NOT one of those pain days after all. Hallelujah for herbal medicine.) (Edibles hate it when you talk shit about them and get you back.) So it is a Good Bad Day. Things would probably, ordinarily, make me grumpy today, but I feel content. For today, at least, things are consonant. Nothing is bothering me. I have redefined what I saw as a coming traumatic struggle into the opportunity to guide both of us into a new and more exciting life. We are surrounded by love. The day is gray, but there are sunny days coming. We want for nothing. We're having a handfasting in two months and family will be here. In September, I'll be able, finally, to legally change my name,

and we'll change hers legally at the same time. On top of all of this, I am confident now that the 40 years in the desert is over. There is a sea change happening. You can see it in the resistance against the worst of it by the majority of Americans. The awfulness reached its worst and shocked every decent American, and the people who drove it have lost their credibility outside anyone in their sewing circle. Their influence is now waning. There are good years coming, and much to look forward to. I feel happy, and that's the weirdness that set this all off. Everything is in balance. Of course there will be bad days again. I'm still mentally ill and while it's under as much control as it can be under, it's not under total control. But I'm okay with that. I know they'll happen, but they make the sweet times sweeter. My beautiful, wonderful Lilith, you will be rewarded for all the good you do. I love you. I love our life. I love being who you need. I will do more to be who you want. Mazel tov!

#trans #transgender #trans woman #mental health #mental illness #lesbian #witchy #witch #love #love story #love writing #balance #joy #happiness #content #contentment #growth #development #borderline #borderline personality disorder #bipolar #anxiety #hrt #progesterone #gender euphoria #magick #spirituality #spirits #hope #faith

[mcsmmafia]

MC:SM Mafia - Round VI 🧠

THE 6TH ROUND OF MAFIA

On a chilling, but not yet snowy december day, a bus drived through the thickness of the swamp to transport eight patients to a asylum to which they have been relocated.

It was a confusing swamp… trees and vines everywhere, no proper roads… but the occupants felt confident that this was no problem for the driver. He was experienced… probably. I mean, he was responsible for the safe arrival of mentally ill patients, of course they wouldn't assign an intern with such an important task, right?

Anyway, the trip lasted the whole night, but just as the sun was rising, you finally arrived at the new asylum! … Which turned out to be a surprisingly old and bedraggled looking mansion? Geesh, talking about healthcare inequality.

Anyway, even though it was not snowing, the trees had frost on their leafs and the wind blew really cold, so you made your way inside without thinking about it too much. And thank goodness, it was actually warm inside! Ah, and there stood the receptionist, a girl with long red hair and a grey, comfortable looking beanie. You went on to line up - but suddenly, the girl turned around and activated a lever on the wall behind her. Huh? What was that all abou-

AND THEN IT WAS DARK AND YOU COULDN'T SEE AND OH MY GOSH I THINK I'M SEEING PUMPKIN FACES AND THERE WERE VOICES TOO, WE'RE ALL HEARING VOICES-

Oh, wait, that might actually be just your own voice… ahh, wait, you got a pumpkin stuck on your head! Well, how did that happen?? You sure didn't know!

… wait WHY ARE WE ALL WEARING PUMPKINS, WHAT IS GOING ON, WE CAN'T GET RID OF THEM, AHHHHH!!!!!

Meanwhile, it seemed like the red haired girl was trying desperately to announce something, but nobody would listen to her. She gave us a very annoyed glance and, in the next second, she put herself in a pumpkin too. And it didn't took a second for everyone to forget where the stranger was.

Dear patients, it is time.

To freak out.

AND-

GET REALITY AND HALLUCINATIONS MIXED UP AND BE EXTRA PARANOID AND PANIC!!!! A LOT!!!!

Oh, and also maybe you should watch out for stranger-danger.

☀ Results of Day 1:

After the patients were done freaking out, they played a nice little introducing game of saying hello to each other, but became bored quickly afterwards, so they split up to explore their new home on their own - I mean, they don't remember which one of them was the receptionist, so there was no other option really.

(Just for fun, I thought about why the MC:SM characters were in psychatric treatment in the first place for a bit: Stella has overwhelming seperation fear, Warden is not really mentally ill but a stalker, Nell has chronic fatigue syndrome, Harper has schizophrenia, Radar is not a patient but the bus driver XD, Ellegaard has bipolar affective disorder, Cassie is still a murderer, and Lukas has depression. (Sorry, Lukas, I couldn't think of any other interesting disorders 😂)

🌑 Results of Night 1:

Lluna wanted to stay in the entrance hall to monitor the front door. When Ellegaard and Lukas joined, Lluna noticed only an iron weapon in the room, so Stella knew she could trust her roommates and told them that she has the Flint & Steel. When she learned that Ellegaard has the iron sword, she asked for protection and stayed in the entrance hall to groom Lluna all night.

Warden ran after Winslow to pet him, and ended up in the attic, where he finally could give that good lil' boy Winslow a pet and happily fall asleep soon after professionally dabbing to his roommates.

Nell didn't have the energy to explore more than the surroundings of the living room, but when she spotted Radar entering, she decided the attic was probably a better place and used all her remaining energy to climb up there and hit the hay.

Harper desperately tried to outrun the creepy pumpkin faces she saw in all windows, and ended up in the attic, where there were no windows. Finally feeling safe, she was able to sink into a deep slumber.

After quickly peeking into every room to make sure nobody else was living in this mansion, Radar went back to the living room to sit down on the comfortable couch and spent the whole night trying to figure this blasted roadmap out…

Ellegaard did her best to protect Stella from stranger-danger.

CASSIE grinned when everybody decided to split up, so she wanted to make the best out of it and followed Warden and ordered Winslow to follow PAMA - but they all ended up in the attic together. Well, crud. With the night wasted, CASSIE decided to just grab her kitty and go to sleep.

Lukas didn't say anything to Stella's revelation, but didn't flee either; he just sat in a corner, silent all night.

☀ Results of Day 2:

The patients argued all day about who should cook breakfast. Before they knew, the sun was already setting, so everyone just grabbed whatever they saw first in the kitchen and scattered to find a good place to sleep. Very productively spent day.

Lukas has been suspended from the round due to inactivity.

🌒 Results of Night 2:

After Lluna reassured herself last night that the front door was indeed very safe and effective against the night monsters outside, she pushed Stella to go to an extra safe place to catch up on some sleep tonight, so she followed her to the attic. She was surprised to only see Radar there, but took the chance to ask for his identity. However, he did not respond… Stella eventually gave up asking and snuggled up to Lluna to visit the land of dreams.

Warden went to grab a snack like the others, but was disappointed by the insufficient selection… a few potatoes, some mushrooms… blergh! Where's the good stuff?? THEY DEMAND THEIR BREAKFAST CAKE! EVEN IF IT MEANS SEARCHING ALL NIGHT FOR IT!! 🍰 …However, they eventually got bored and fled to the gallery in hopes for more danger. (Little did they know that danger was coming right their way, had they only stayed!)

Oh great, Nell was already always tired, and now she's also gonna be hungry because nobody volunteered to cook the stupid breakfast! So, to conserve brain energy, she just went back to where she was last night and enjoyed her sleep in sweet solitude.

Harper couldn't shake the feeling of being closely watched by someone or something… she tried her best to hide her worries, but when night came, she skedaddled to the most isolated room she could find! …And, of course, that ended up being the gallery, because nobody cares for art, sigh. …But the feeling of being stalked remained - but now at last she realized where it was coming from: This weird calico cat in the corner over there with it's evil green eyes was watching her! What a creeper! 😼 She placed PAMA directly in front of Winslow to try and cover his glance, but this darned cat just walked around it. Welp, there was no way she would sleep with him around!

Oh gosh, everything is chaos… it's Radar's fault the patients are not safe in an asylum, and don't have regular meals, and now they can't stop arguing!! This is the absolute worst… and he was still really exhausted… maybe he should just go to sleep for a night. Perhaps, in the morning, things are gonna be better. So he chose a safe place to sleep, which of course only really can be the attic, and rested for a bit, after doing their best to ignore Stella's questions.

Oh my, Ellegaard was in full flow today! Was it the lack of sleep, or is she on her way to go hyper? Wherever this energy is coming from, it sure made her heat up the argument about breakfast today. Well, at least she snatched the only mushroom stew she found premade in the kitchen. Success! After being so harsh to everyone, however, she realized that she probably should try to calm down somewhere alone, so she went to the bed chamber. A big, nice pillow helps for meditation, you know? In fact, the pillows were so comfortable, ellegaard fell asleep almost immeditaly. That's how meditation works, right? 💤

CASSIE really had to contain herself to not burst out in laughter under her pumpkin mask when hearing the argument today. They're all distracting themselves, and CASSIE didn't even really have to do anything! Anyway, while the discussion was nicely heated, she had things to do. She needed to make sure that the next night would not be wasted! So she kept an eye on Warden to see where he would go this time. …And, as it turns out, he didn't go anywhere. He just stayed right here in the kitchen, searching for better food, CASSIE figured. So she ordered Winslow to patrol the hallway between gallery and bed-chamber and snuck up on Warden to cat-nap him… and was surprised when her hands could only grasp air! With the night wasted - again - she could only sleep her frustration away.

☀ Results of Day 3:

A new day dawned, and before anyone had the chance to address any hard feelings left over from yesterday, Harper spoke up to tell the patients that Winslow was following her everywhere she went. She also mentioned who else was in the room with her the past nights, skipping PAMA.

Stella then stated that she wanted to be locked up, and asked Harper to vote for herself too. Warden was quick to offer guarding them. Nobody else voted.

Warden also warned the group that he dabbed threateningly, and then tried to catch Winslow to throw him into the closet too, but he was fast to jump onto some high-laying shelf where Warden couldn't get him. 😼

🌓 Results of Night 3:

Stella had a hard time to going apart, but Lluna accomponied her all the way to the closet, and assured her with a bleat that she will reliably return in the morning to pick her up again. And she kept her word, to Stella’s great relief.

Warden regretted it a little to have volunteered as a guard, since he would rather do some detective word, but in the end he did not retreat from his duty and made sure to poke the prisoners the whole night through, even though he didn't really suspect them to be Cassie.

Nell just went to the living room again and slept like normal. She is really not afraid of traps.  

Harper was just glad to be safe from Winslow for one night, at least.

Radar took the chance and went to the entrance hall to see if there were any pets around. He could spot Lluna and PAMA, but also CASSIE - so he waited for a bit to see wheter CASSIE would leave and if one pet would go with her. As it turns out - Lluna and PAMA must belong to someone in the closet!

Ellegaard went back to the bed chamber, but when she saw that Winslow seemed to now be targeting her, she toyed with the idea of trying to figure out if she could activate a trap on Winslow - but of course, that grown kitty would be too smart to fall for his owner's traps. 😼 So Ellegaard dropped that plan and just climbed up to the attic instead.

CASSIE followed Radar - but of course he wouldn't go anywhere. CASSIE sighed in her streak of bad luck and sneaked away to the bed chamber to sleep.

☀ Results of Day 4:

Stella started the day by immediately confronting Warden about the sleeplessness-ordinance which he put her and Harper through, to which Warden apologized, stating that he didn't really suspected them to be Cassie.

Stella then went on to state that she suspects either Nell or CASSIE to be Cassie, since they are the only ones who haven't been checked by her best friend and pillow Lluna. Ellegaard vouched for this claim, only stating that she knew a thing.

Nell was about to vote Stella for the closet, but promptly retreated. Warden then voted to throw Nell out, stating that he is about 65% sure that Nell is Cassie, and 35% that it's CASSIE, which he subsequently voted into the closet.

Nell tried desperately to convince the others of her innocence, but had nobody who could vouch for her.

Stella voted for Nell to get thrown out too, but then retreated, saying that she wanted to lock her up first. CASSIE, Ellegaard and Harper agreed that there was not enough evidence yet. Harper then voted for the same thing.

(Oh my gosh, no offence to the person playing CASSIE, but I could hardly stop laughing about how they kept referring to Cassie and how nervous they were about her - and everybody just talked over that! I was so sure their cover would blow 😂😂😂)

🌔 Results of Night 4:

Stella realized that she has TWO arms, with which she was able to poke both Nell AND CASSIE at the same time! So she did that because IF STELLA COULDN'T SLEEP, THEY CAN'T EITHER! Also, it helped to distract her mind from Lluna and how she's doing.

Warden thought about sneaking to the closet and spawn-killing Nell… but realizing he had no weapon to do this anyway, he just went up to the attic and let the dream be a real dream.

Nell was really mad about being locked into a closet, and sang a song in order to try and annoy the guard so much that she would let her free - but was exhausted quickly and ended up just enduring the acupuncture. Stella really was NOT a great masseur.

Harper was paranoid when going to the gallery, but couldn't find a kitty anywhere - has he actually stopped following her? Harper was still a bit nervous, so she inspected some dusty, pixelated art about seven people with white pumpkins on their head before realizing how boring the pictures really were… but they freaked her out anyway, so she started counting all the pixels until she fell asleep.

Radar could barely follow the discussion that was going on… he was just too tired. He longed for the sun to set, and when it finally did, he concentrated all his strength to climb up to the attic before basically fainting on the floor face down.

Ellegaard was a little freaked out by seeing Winslow with her in the library, of all places. But she went to sleep anyway.

CASSIE very imperceptibly wishpered Winslow to patrol the hallway between dining room and library before she discontentedly followed Stella into the closet and endured being poked all night.

☀ Results of Day 5:

CASSIE started the day by complaining about being poked the whole night, which Stella interrupted saying that she didn't have Lluna with her in the closet, which was a problem. She also stated that Nell was singing "something about tissues", and that that was a crime because they were a Duck.

Note: The person playing Stella has a username referring to ducks.

After that, they realized that they (and it was totally not my fault) had overlooked a list that revealed that Warden and Radar were having a slumber party in the attic last night!

But that was quickly forgotten again when Warden decided to yell out loud that he wanted to throw Nell out. But when a voice from above told them to vote then, they retreated.

Stella went on to vote CASSIE into the closet, instead - but immediately rectified themself to Nell. Freudian slip? Warden voted for the same and asked Radar to guard, but Harper volunteered right after. They agreed to let Radar do it (even though Radar didn't use @Game Master ARRRGH but let's overlook that… this time.)

The patients then talked about cat-crazy people and the fact that PAMA was with them, but nobody claimed to own it, although Stella and CASSIE claimed to know who Harper is.

However, Radar revealed to have written the note last night. And then continued to ask if he could pet Lluna, because passing out is very exhausting. And thus, Lluna was promoted to stress therapy pet!

Warden also tried to vote to lock up the voice in his head. It wasn't very successful - Oh… nevermind. They put Alexa into the closet.

Radar also tried to order McMurder Fries. (Oh god, now he's losing his mind too…)

Nell brought them back on topic by loudly concluding that Cassie must be one of the people who have been locked up in the toilet, and that she's suspecting CASSIE.

Radar and Stella overheard everything but toilet and were so inspired that they wrote a survival guideline on how to survive murder and get rich. 🚽💰

Nell ignored them and voted to throw CASSIE out, to which Stella heavily disagreed.

Most patients were confused by Nell's use of the word "toilet" for the closet, but Warden approved the use of "toilet" for "closet" by saying how cruel society was for not letting him do his business in closets.

Stella brought up how she wanted to feed the zombies the flint & steel, and how a smooch would cure them… she was in her own world, for sure. She wondered if she could eat the zombies, and CASSIE too pondered how'd they taste.

Finally, the voice from above had enough and sent them all to bed. SERIOUSLY. This was long, but I had so much fun - doing this round in an asylum was the best idea ever. 😂

The Last Night 🌕

All Cassie ever wanted was to live a happy life with her 372,026,931 calico cats… but nooo, society had to declare that that was not "normal" and a sign of "mental illness" and that she should be put in an asylum for therapy. It was really their fault, not hers - the other patients constantly got on her nerves, and the staff wasn't much better as they treated everyone the same, no matter if they were sane, like her, or really crazy. So Cassie might have put up a few traps that killed a patient or two and maybe also the whole population of the house. It happens! She could impossibly have stood another second in this madhouse! Why does nobody ever seem to understand…?

Anyway, so she went outside - only to realize that she was stuck in this whole swamp dimension that was just created so that patients could never escape on their own. But the staff had to be able to get out somehow, right? She went back to the asylum, but it seemed like all their drops had disappeared already. Crud, she should've rushed to get them as soon as these people were dead!

She certainly wouldn't ever make that mistake again - but for now, she had no way to return to her home… luckily, however, her most beloved cat Winslow came to help. He risked being stuck in this mad-dimension with her for eternity! He was such a good cat. And he brought friends! 😼 😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼

Although that really cheered Cassie up, she still didn't want to accept her fate of living here forever. Maybe some day new patients would be admitted, then someone would have to bring them there and get out again afterwards…

And, look at that, they indeed came. Five more patients and one quite young looking bus driver.

Cassie spent days thinking and plotting how she could effectively eliminate them without being noticed… because even though this is an asylum we're talking about, the patients were not yet crazy enough to just let her do her thing. So she tried to cat-nap them, but it didn't quite ever work out.

As the days passed, the patients managed to narrow down who could be responsible for not cooking them breakfast and dinner - and they almost unanimously agreed that it's either Nell or CASSIE. And in night 5, Lluna followed CASSIE to the living room - she knew that was practically her death sentence, since everyone so far seemed to unquestionedly believe Stella everything she said.

So Cassie took her chance, and finally went to the secret passage ways to activate a trap on Stella, Warden and Ellegaard - all or nothing!

And, look at that… when Cassie went to collect their drops, she found the FLINT & STEEL where Stella was. That was… easy.

Well. Cassie wasn't complaining.

Finally. Finally she can get out of this dimension and back to her other 372,026,922 cats who surely are still patiently waiting for her to return home! (And feed them.) 😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼😼

Oh, and also, she may or may not have lit the mansion on her way out just for celebration. What, now that's making her a pyromaniac? OH SHUT UP, SOCIETY! SHE JUST WANTS TO MAKE SURE THE PATIENTS ARE WARM INSIDE!!! 🔥🔥🔥

Cassie has won the game! 🧠

#mcsm #episode 6 #mafia #this was a really fun round #the most fun of them all even

[szopenhauer]

Do you have pockets in anything you are wearing currently? I don’t

Have you ever tasted your own tears? it’s hard not to when you cry so often

Do you hang your clothes outside or put it in the dryer? outside, not during wither tho

Do you like the letter q or the letter z better? Z

Do you do anything weird in your sleep? who knows

How many times can you jump in jumproping? I didn’t jump for a long time now so I dunno if I can jump as many times as I used to - doubt it

Do you like the beach? I like wet sand, beachcombing

Have you ever built a sandcastle? I suppose, I want to do that again sometime

Is there a mirror in the room that you are in? not a hanging one

What color is your comb? one is white and other two are red

When did you pull out your first tooth? I don’t remember

How old were you when you said your first word? same

Have you ever had a pet rabbit? hell no

Do you like the autumn? it’s fine unless weather gets really cold and snowy

Are you good at drawing? a bit

What is your Hogwarts house?  Ravenclaw?

Have you ever seen the Percy Jackson movie/s? nope

Ever seen Glee? fragments

Do you like Demi Lovato? Name a song by her. not a fan

Tarzan or The Lion King? Tarzan, from Lion King I only liked Timon and Pumba and I didn’t cry when Mufasa died

Lilo & Stitch or Moana? Lilo and Stitch

Hercules or Pinocchio? Hercules

Rugrats or Powerpuff Girls? Powerpuff girls

Ever seen Pretty Little Liars? no

Baking or dancing? dancing 

Sports or shopping? shopping

Blue or yellow? yellow

Green or pink? green

Did/do you go to a public school, a private school, or homeschool? public

Do you have a secret sideblog? not anymore

If you could teleport anywhere in the world right now, where would you go? if I could teleport once I would save that ability for special occassion like emergency but if I was able to teleport whenever then hmm...

Do you have/would you get your nipples pierced? nah

How would you spend a million dollars? buy an apartment, help my parents, live better *maybe even make a movie?

What’s your pet peeve? I have so many

Do you like paper books or ebooks better? paper

If you could live in a fictional world, what world would you pick? Moomin valley

If money was no object, what would your wardrobe be like? big hahaha

If you could marry any celebrity, who would you pick? well I don’t know them personally so it’s hard to say - just choosing based on their look? hmm...

Who do you text the most? my gf

If you had to choose, which sibling would you live with? I only have a sister so... I would prefer not to live with her again, thx

When was your last date? last week

Are there any people at your job who absolutely hates you? if I had a job...

Do you prefer cool, warm or neutral colors? depends

Have you ever taken art classes? I have

Do you know how to work a cash register? I hope I didn’t forget much about it

Fact or fiction novels? fiction

Do you think you’re a clingy person? am I?

Do you enjoy kisses on the cheek? not really

How often would you say you disagree with your parents? often with my mom, rarely with my dad

Have you ever slept with your window open? nah

What color are your mother’s eyes? brown

Do you cry easily? very

Have you ever been into a court room? field trip in middle school

How many necklaces would you say you own? too many as for someone who never wear them.

What time do you plan on waking up tomorrow morning? wish I didn’t have to

Do you enjoy receiving souvenirs? buying them myself

Do a lot of people dislike you or is it the other way around? it’s both ways

What’s the worst part about school? bullying, grade stress, unhealthy eating, sitting all day long, walking there in the cold and snow during winter etc.

Would you ever consider going on a cruise? nah

Do you still act childish most of the time? often

Did you ever enjoy gym class? at times I enjoyed PE

What is your biggest insecurity? dunno which is biggest, I have plenty of them

Have you ever painted a room alone? not alone but helping

Speaking of which, when did you last paint your room? ages ago

Do you know how to garden? but don’t like to

Do you have any bad habits? shitload

How old were your parents when they had you? in their 30s

What is the most amusing thing on the internet, in your opinion? memes?

Do you try to spend a lot of time with family? compared to some people I spend lots of time with my parents

Do you need to clean your bedroom? yeah

What do you plan on doing with the rest of your life? we’ll see

Which decade were you born in? 90s

Are you good at giving advice to people? but not myself

Is there anyone out there who makes you feel completely useless? I am useless

Do you like texting or calling people more? text

Do you have a lot of friends? I don’t really have friends

Have you ever thought of someone as useless? myself for example

Can you count to ten in another language other than your own? english, polish, russian

Does photography interest you at all? kinda

Do you think you’re a good singer? am not

Do you think you have a good sense of style? I have my own style

Do you enjoy reading often? not often

Are you afraid of lifts? I prefer to take the stairs

How exactly are you feeling right now? Why do you feel the way you do? emotionally/mentally bad because of family and health issues mostly, physically my usual so not the best but can’t complain much

Has the last person you held hands with, ever told you that they love you? yes

Which do you think is the worst - saying something and then wishing you hadn’t, or not saying something and wishing you had? saying smth and wishing I hadn’t is worse to me

When was the last time you saw your grandparents? I saw my grandma almost 3 years ago

Have you ever felt really attracted to someone, but been deterred because you found out they didn’t have a very nice personality? omg more than once

Have you ever hugged/kissed someone you’d only just met? hugged, not kissed

Would you ever apologize for something that wasn’t your fault? I do that sometimes

Has anyone ever cried in your arms before? sure

Do you keep a lot of things from your parents? basically nothing

Using one word only, describe the day you’ve had so far. Sunday

Have you been annoyed at someone/something today? I still am  Are you avoiding anybody at the moment? you could say that Is rap your favorite genre of music? it’s not Have you ever lasted a relationship longer then two months? yep Is it safe to walk around your neighborhood at night? not for me Are you a fan of heights? nah but I’m not super scared of heights Rate your typing speed on a scale from 1 - 10? almost 10

Do you text more then you talk on the phone? obvi Are you scared to grow old? to get more ill

Do you use a dishwasher or wash dishes by hand? by hand, I hate dishwashers

What is the best pharmacy near you? they’re not that good 

Do you use public transportation? yup

How much does it cost for you to laundry (if you use a slot machine)? we have a washer at home

Do you make your bed every day? I’m lazy and it’s unhealthy to so I don’t

Do you save receipts? depends

Do you use re-usable bags at the grocery store? yep

Have you ever burnt yourself with the glue gun? slightly

Wall calendar or desk calendar? pocket :P 

Does your home have a basement? it does

How often do you clean? clean what?

How often do you go grocery shopping? often

Ever bought a lottery ticket? few times

Do you gamble? online for free at times

Do you ever sleep on the floor? sleepover

Which room do you stay in the most? mine

Ever worked two jobs or more at once? noooo

Do you live in an apartment, condo, house, or dorm? house

How often do you go see a doctor? too often

Do you have acid reflux? chronic

Do you snore? no

Are you on birth control? I’m asexual and into women 

Do you put on make-up in the bathroom or the bedroom? I did it wherever

What is the first site you go to when you turn on your computer? fb

Which email service do you use? wp

How often do you check your email? usually rarely

How old were you when you got your first phone? I was in middle school

Did you own a Britney Spears album? I don’t listen to Britney Spears

What sites are you on? plenty

Does the door to your room have a lock? I wish, it has a funny stuffed/plushie one What type of skin do you have? mixed Ever gotten beer poured all over yourself? luckily not, gross *from what I remember someone poured wine or beer on my shoes once in the store by breaking the bottle and didn’t pay for anything  Who’s the last person you had a sleepover with? John  Who’s the last person you wanted to kiss? my gf Can you keep a secret? not really When’s the last time you went on a walk? this evening

Do you feel uncomfortable when people you hardly know confide in you? if they use me 

Have you ever regretted what you said in drunken conversation once sober? never been in such situation

Is there anything coming up which you’re dreading? it’s complicated

Do you ever do tedious tasks just to keep your mind occupied? I have my usual things/distractions that I do everyday

Have you ever lived with somebody with truly repulsive habits? could say so?

Do you tend to say things because they’re appropriate not because you mean them?   sometimes

What was the last thing to fascinate you? smth I saw on the internet?

What was the last thing to annoy you? someone close to me

When did your hard work last pay off?   basically never

When did you last feel a need to be alone? almost always?

When did you last REALLY want to go out but couldn’t for whatever reason?   covid and my other health problems but also money

Have you ever eaten chocolate for breakfast? nooo

Do you like balloons? I do (don’t worry tho I can do without them)

When will you next go to the beach? *shrug*

If you have pet fish do you bother to name them?   if I had fish I probably would name them

Did you ever read the Terry Pratchet “Disk World” books?   I hate Pratchett

Do you keep your eggs in the fridge? of course

Have you ever owned chickens? I wanted to

Do you like classical music? at times, some songs

When did you last listen to music?   this day

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 30/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 4760 rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: As always, immense thanks to @obsessivelymoody for beta’ing!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

It’s too early when Phil gets out of bed to get ready for work.

His arm slips from around Dan’s waist. He presses a quick kiss to Dan’s shoulder before crawling out from behind him. The alarm clock on the bedside table tells Dan it’s just past seven in bright red lines that make his eyes burn. 

He’s been staring at them since they said 5:27.

He’d woken up to a sharp breath that made his chest ache, tears in his eyes and sticky on his cheeks. His feet were numb and his hands all prickly with sleep and he’d stared into the black of Phil’s bedroom for long minutes waiting for his body to recover from whatever it was that woke him up. It had taken him until two to fall asleep last night.

Dan didn’t fall asleep again.

His legs ache now that they’re not sleepy. His arm hurts from having his weight on it for so long. Without Phil’s body holding him up, Dan rolls onto his side. It makes the muscles in his chest spasm, has him choking on nothing and groaning into the silence.

Phil comes over to the edge of the bed, reaching out to brush his fingers across Dan’s forehead.

“You okay?” he whispers. 

Dan’s eyes get teary again. He blames the too-tight feeling wrapped around his heart, the thoughts that have been circling the back of his mind for the last two hours. His body hurts from not having slept and his brain keeps telling him that his mum was right, it is all his brain’s fault, that’s what Dr. Kissel will tell him today.

He reaches up, snags Phil’s hand to hold on tight, and hums something that isn’t quite affirmative.

It’s the best he can muster this morning.

A frown draws at Phil’s mouth. He leans down, pressing a quick kiss to Dan’s forehead. And then a second one, like he doesn’t really want to pull away.

Dan doesn’t want him to. If this broken feeling wasn’t so perpetual, he might ask Phil to call in sick and stay home with him, keep him company when the drone of TV programs isn’t enough to keep him out of his own head. But Phil’s done a lot. Dan’s needed a lot.

He hopes that’ll diminish today. 

Hope’s never been his strong suit before doctor’s appointments.

He tugs on Phil’s hand until he leans down, fringe tickling Dan’s brow, and kisses him, soft and gentle and slow.

And then he lets Phil go.

---

Dan: i hate weekdays

Phil doesn’t respond. Not that he should. Dan knows he probably has to do extra since he’s leaving early to come to Dan’s appointment. That doesn’t keep him from flicking his phone on and off over and over again for too many minutes after he sends the message.

It’s been a long morning. The clock on his phone tells him it’s only half eleven and Dan almost wants to cry. 

There’s four and a half hours until his appointment. He’s been staring into space for so long his brain is starting to go numb and yet there’s too much going on inside his mind to focus on anything else.

He’d considered sitting down, rambling into the void, also known as his laptop webcam, again. It helped last time. But it feels almost silly, when he’s by himself, without Phil to recommend he do it. That, and the idea of setting any of it up sounds like way too much effort today.

He double taps the screen, copies the message and sends the exact same thing to Taylor.

His phone vibrates when she responds. It stings the skin of his palm, feels like it rattles the bones in his wrists. He doesn’t much care.

Taylor: why?

Dan: phil’s not home

Dan: and my appts this afternoon and i cant stop thinking about it

He swallows, looking back up to stare at the TV. He’s definitely seen this episode of Doctor Who before, probably on another day like today, watching the endless marathons of the same few shows for hours on end when his body doesn’t really let him do much else.

His brain can’t process it today. It’s too busy replaying every appointment he’s ever had in the most painful sort of slow motion.

Taylor: :(

Taylor: i know that feeling

Dan: yea well it sucks

He rests his phone on his leg, where the pressure makes a dull ache bloom like a new bruise. His thumb hovers over the home button until the three little dots of Taylor’s typing pop onto the screen. He watches, because it’s better than staring at white walls and waiting for minutes to tick by.

Taylor: want some company? 

Taylor: I know i’m not phil but I also don’t have a job

Dan: pls

---

He has to stand up to let her into the flat.

His steps are slow. The blanket he has wrapped around his shoulders flutters over his skin and leaves phantom burns in its wake. His hand almost feels too weak to turn the doorknob when he gets there. There’s a stabbing pain in his wrist that makes it feel like it might shatter as it twists.

Taylor’s smiling on the other side. It falters, just slightly, when she sees him.

“I’d hug you hello, but you look like you’re dying,” she says. 

Dan manages half, or maybe a quarter of a smile. “Feel like it too.”

He leads her back to the sofa, still limping. Walking past the breakfast bar reminds him he hasn’t had anything to eat today, and barely a few sips of water to drink. The thought makes his stomach churn, something burning at the back of his throat. He won’t eat until after the appointment.

Maybe later, if it goes poorly.

Probably later.

Taylor tucks herself against the armrest as Dan sits down, knees drawn up to her chest, face pressed against one. Being sat with her, like this, reminds him of being back in uni. Except she looks better. There’s less darkness under her eyes and less oil in her hair, and Dan wishes he could relate.

His whole body feels heavy. Worse than it did even then.

“That bad, huh?” says Taylor. 

“Can’t sleep,” says Dan. “I don’t know what to expect.”

“So you’re expecting the worst?”

He can’t be bothered to nod. The corner of Taylor’s mouth quirks up knowingly, and she reaches out to rest a hand right by Dan’s knee, without touching. 

“We should talk about something else,” she says. “Something happy. Keep your mind off it for a while.”

“Like what?”

She shrugs. “Just tell me something good that happened? My therapist makes me do it sometimes.”

“Oh,” says Dan. He stares down at the table, where his phone’s resting, screen down, and his laptop’s closed. His hand curls tight around his blanket. 

When he looks back up at Taylor, her brow’s furrowed, smile fallen into a straight line. “You look like you’re thinking about something,” she says.

“I am,” Dan mumbles. He swallows, thumb sweeping across the fleece of his blanket until his fingertip’s gone tingly. “Phil kissed me.”

Taylor’s jaw drops. Her eyes go happy. She reaches over, actually touches Dan this time, just enough to grab his hand and squeeze it once in glee. “Oh my god. That’s, like, the best kind of happy,” she says. “It is happy, right?”

Dan wants to point out that he wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t, but the smile on her face finally has his anxiety unfurling just enough for him to breathe a little easier. Maybe Taylor’s therapist actually has some useful ideas. 

He forces himself not to follow that thought to the next, the ones saying maybe all he needs is therapy over and over again in his mum’s voice in the back of his head.

“Yeah, it’s happy,” he says. “You know that.”

“And you’re not having some sexuality crisis you need me to talk you through?” she says, half laughing now. “I’ve been there. I can try to help.”

Dan actually manages half a chuckle, like he did when she first told him she liked girls, halfway through a complaint about how everyone at uni somehow had a love life except them. “Reckon I got over that when he started kissing my head all the time,” he says. “Thanks for the offer though.”

She nods, still holding his hand, staring at the side of his face with a smile. “So this is just happy, right? No inner turmoil about what it means or anything?”

It’s been so long since Dan’s had anything be that simple that his brain doesn’t quite grasp the concept. He almost tells her no, just because it makes more sense, because his brain is really good at finding problems where there’s probably non right now. 

It doesn’t feel like he can be just happy now.

But then he thinks about the soft goodnight kiss Phil brushed against his lips before they went to bed to bed last night, and an actual smile cracks past the fear. 

“Yeah,” he tells her. “That’s just happy.”

---

They talk about Phil for a while.

It’s easy, with Taylor, to just ramble about sleepy cuddles and soft kisses and the way it all makes him feel good for the first time in ages. It reminds Dan of being twelve again, before everything went wrong and his body broke and any chance at normalcy crumbled before his very eyes. 

Maybe there is room for a sexuality crisis, if he thinks too hard about the crushes he might have had if he’d been healthy.

Dan doesn’t think about it. He lets his head fall back against the sofa and feels his thoughts lapse into everything that came after age twelve. His story about their kiss ended a bit ago, faded into discussions about where he wants things to go from here, and then into silence.

There’s a lot of things Dan wants now. Most of them have nothing to do with kissing Phil.

“Hey,” says Taylor. He’s not sure how long they’ve just been sitting here, but her smile has fallen into a frown. “You okay?”

He shrugs. Vaguely, he processes that people are still talking on the TV, that Taylor’s hand has fallen to rest on his knee. “Just thinking.”

“Not about happy things?”

His chest burns when he chuckles. The rush of giddy conversation has faded, left Dan’s body more exhausted now than it was before. He almost wants to nap, except he knows his brain wouldn’t let him. Days like today are just days where he’s meant to be sore and tired and feel all of it acutely.

“No,” he says. “Not about happy things.”

Taylor squeezes his knee. It hurts. It’s comforting anyway. 

“Do you want me to try and distract you with more happy things?”

“Don’t think you can,” he admits. “I think I’ve used up all my happy energy for today.”

His head falls back again, gaze drifting up to the ceiling. His vision goes blurry. It’s not from tears. Dan’s pretty sure his eyes are just tired, too. It takes too much energy to force them to focus again.

He takes a breath. It hurts his throat, his head being bent back like this, and tugs at the tendons in his neck. 

“I don’t think it’s going to be a happy day,” he whispers, voice cracking “I’m–”

Scared. He doesn’t say it. 

“I know,” says Taylor.

They sit there, listening to the same drawl that Dan usually does. His eyes have fallen closed. He can hear his own breathing, loud compared to Taylor’s, but he doesn’t much care to worry about it. Taylor’s never been bothered by the little ways Dan’s body is different.

She just leans forward, snagging the remote from where it was sitting on the coffee table, and says, “Let’s put on a better film, at least.”

If Dan had the energy, he’d smile.

---

Phil gets home from work earlier than Dan expected.

“I worked my lunch,” he explains. “And my boss deemed me completely useless today. Apparently I was distracted.”

He’s sitting on the armrest, leaning over Dan. Whatever lighthearted smile he’s attempting lasts about half a second before it falls. His hand lands on Dan’s head, drawing his curls back. Taylor’s still sitting next to them, but Phil hardly hesitates before leaning down to press a kiss to the corner of Dan’s brow.

“Wonder why,” says Taylor. It’s a whisper, like she’s trying not to interrupt. “I should get going, though. I’m sure you guys have to get ready or some shit.”

Dan almost asks her to stay, just so he has an excuse to pretend that three thirty isn’t slowly sneaking up on him.

“Thanks for coming over,” says Phil.

“Yeah, of course.”

Dan can hear her smile, can see Phil’s. It makes his chest go warm. 

Taylor looks down at him before she leaves. “Good luck,” she says. “Text me when you’re ready to talk about whatever the doctor has to say.”

“I will,” says Dan. He hopes his smile is enough to tell her how much he appreciates the space she permits him.

Phil escorts her to the door. They hug before she leaves. Dan hears the murmur of her voice, too far for him to pick up on any words. He listens to the door open, then close, and then Phil returns by himself, dropping into the seat Taylor was just occupying.

Dan should probably feel bad for how relieved he is that Phil’s here now, but he doesn’t, not really.

His head falls back against the cushions, too, turned so he’s looking at Dan. He looks exhausted, eyes puffy and face all drawn. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Shit,” says Dan. “You?”

“Scared,” Phil whispers.

Dan nods, awkward and crooked with his head still tilted back. He reaches into the space between them, taking Phil’s hand in his. Their fingers interlock, and the pressure against his knuckles is not very comfortable, but it makes the corner of Phil’s mouth quirk up.

“Yeah,” says Dan. “Me too.”

---

They get to the doctor’s office early.

Sitting at home, waiting for the minutes to tick by, had become unbearable. Dan forgot that waiting rooms are always exponentially worse. Phil’s arm isn’t wrapped around him here. They don’t hold hands. Their feet are pressed together between their seats. It’s not enough.

Across from them, a mum is rocking her baby as he fusses. And older man is reading one of the magazines left out for them. Phil had tried to pick one up, and had put it down about thirty seconds later. The secretary who booked this appointment is talking on the phone. The other is checking someone in.

There’s a poster about heart failure on the wall. 

Dan stares at it until his chest starts to hurt and the anxiety makes his eyes water.

Phil grabs his hand, holds on tight.

“Your heart's fine,” he says. “You’ve had that tested before, right?”

“Yeah.” Dan lets out a breath. “Yeah. It was fine.”

“Okay,” says Phil. “Okay. That’s good.”

His grip on Dan’s hand loosens, his breath coming easier. 

Dan’s stays locked painfully between his ribs until a nurse steps out from the hallway and calls his name.

---

She checks his height, even though he hasn’t grown in over a year. And then his weight, as though it’s fluctuated much since his last growth spurt, since he lost his appetite and ability to exercise all at once. 

“Looks good,” she says, like she thinks that’s what Dan cares about.

She leads him into a little room and asks him questions, the familiar kind with automatic answers. No, he’s not diabetic. No, he doesn’t smoke. No, he hasn’t had caffeine in the last couple hours, because just the thought of putting something on his stomach makes him want to be sick.

He doesn’t say that last bit.

She wraps the blood pressure cuff around his arm. Dan squeezes his eyes shut against the pain when it tightens. He should be used to it. Part of him doesn’t think he’ll ever be.

His pulse is high, his blood pressure low. The nurse points it out.

“It’s always like that,” he explains.

She looks back at him, brows furrowed, skeptical. Dan hates it. He manages a shrug and a smile, an unspoken apology for something stupidly out of his control like his heart not beating quite right. 

He tries not to think about chronic obstructive heart failure.

The nurse jots something down on her triage paper and leads him into an exam room to sit and wait some more. Phil grabs his hand again the moment she closes the door behind her.

---

Dr. Kissel is smiling when she walks in. Dan’s not sure if that’s supposed to be comforting or not.

“How are you doing today?” she asks as she sits down, turning to log into the computer.

“Uh,” says Dan. “As okay as to be expected?”

She hums, turning back to him in her spinny office chair. The collar of her lab coat is popped awkwardly at one side. There’s a pen hanging from its pocket, a stethoscope draped across her shoulders. Her smile hardly falters as she says, “So, not very well at all, I assume?” 

It’s so not what Dan expected that he chuckles. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“I take it you want to get straight to your test results, then?” says Dr. Kissel.

He swallows hard. If the nurse thought his pulse was high before, he’d half laugh at what she’d have to say now. “Please.”

Dr. Kissel turns back to her computer at that. He watches her click through what he vaguely recognizes as his chart. Just above the notes from his last appointment are the last things his old doctor ever wrote about him, at the appointment where he counted Dan’s tests one by one and told him that if they were all fine there was nothing he could do unless Dan was willing to accept he was imagining it all.

Dan doesn’t read them, doesn’t want to. He never wants to be exposed to those words again.

He watches Dr. Kissel click on a link of some kind, and a monochrome image fills her computer screen. It takes him a second to realize he’s staring at his own brain, at the results from his MRI, autoplaying on a loop through his entire head over and over again.

Something in his chest spasms. Phil squeezes his hand. He never let it go.

“Okay, so first we have your MRI, which are the results I was most concerned about,” says Dr. Kissel. She turns back towards him, grabbing her pen to use it as a pointer. “If there was any signs of deterioration or abnormal structures like a tumour or aneurysm, we’d see it here.”

Dan stares. He can’t really see anything in his brain. He doesn’t know what a sign of deterioration looks like. He almost doesn’t want to ask.

He doesn’t have to, because Phil says, “And?”

“And I see no signs of any abnormalities with your brain,” says Dr. Kissel. “Your brain appears healthy, Dan.”

“Oh,” he says. 

His eyes are burning now. He hates the fact that it’s not from relief, that he doesn’t really know what’s welling in his chest, putting pressure in his skull, but it doesn’t feel good when he knows it should.

“What about the, uh, bloodwork?”

She doesn’t open those results, just leaves the screen playing a morbid cycle of his perfectly healthy brain. 

Dr. Kissel smiles, and says, “Those results also came back normal.”

Dan just about breaks down right there in the middle of her office. A tear falls down his cheek. His leg starts shaking. Phil has to reach out and rest a hand on his back just to keep him from giving up on keeping his breathing even at all.

Dr. Kissel reaches out, rests her hand on the armrest, close to Dan’s elbow.

“That doesn’t mean anything, you know,” she says. Her voice has gone soft. Dan’s never had a doctor, not even a therapist, speak to him like that. “I reviewed your medical history and I’m aware of the conclusions drawn by your past physician. That’s not where I’m going with this.”

“It’s not?” says Dan. It sounds choked. He feels like a kid. 

Except when he was a kid he didn’t have to deal with any of this.

“It’s not,” says Dr. Kissel. “Rather, I suspect you might have a condition that doesn’t show up on any of our current tests, at least not to our knowledge. Ruling out other conditions is the first step to diagnosing it.”

Phil’s hand starts rubbing circles against his spine at that. If Dan looked over, he’s pretty sure Phil would be smiling.

But he doesn’t. He can’t look away from Dr. Kissel, not now. “What’s the next step?” he whispers.

“Well, there’s two. The diagnostic criteria is in the process of evolving, so I’d like to perform both,” she says. “One of them might be painful.”

“Can we do that one first?”

It’s probably the wrong order to want. Dan doesn’t care. Part of him wants the pain to remind him that she’s actually looking for something physical. For once. For the first fucking time in seven years. 

Dr. Kissel smiles like she knows that and nods her head just once. “I’ll need you to stand up for this,” she says. “I’m going to press against specific spots on your body, and you need to tell me if it hurts, okay?”

He nods. His heart’s still racing when he stands. His legs feel weak with something other than exhaustion. 

Something almost thrilling, like anticipation.

Dr. Kissel starts by pressing her thumb against the base of his skull, right where his head meets his neck. Dan almost screams at the burst of pain it causes. 

It turns into a laugh, delirious and bubbly and out of control. When he turns, Phil’s smiling at him. Dr. Kissel is staring at him expectantly. 

“Yeah, that hurts,” he says, so she does the same thing to the other side of his head.

He laughs again, because it hurts and it feels like that’s what it’s supposed to do for whatever mystery illness Dr. Kissel’s testing him for. Phil laughs with him. He’s probably confused, but he doesn’t seem to care. Dr. Kissel moves onto the next spot, right where Dan’s neck meets his shoulder, and mumbles a quiet three under her breath when he squirms away from her touch.

In the end, he gets sixteen out of eighteen spots. Dr. Kissel tells him the minimum for a diagnosis is eleven. 

Dan probably shouldn’t be proud of that.

He settles back into his seat. The pressure of it hurts. Pain has bloomed all across his body and Dr. Kissel offered an apology that it would probably take a little while to fade and Dan doesn’t care. His leg bounces even though there was a spot in his hip that almost made it give out completely. 

His knee stings from when she pressed there. Dan rests his hand there anyway.

“What’s next?” he asks. He probably sounds insane.

Dr. Kissel just reaches over and draws a packet of papers from her folders. She sets it down on the desk by him. The front page has a picture of a gender-non-specific person with arms spread and eyes closed. The top of it has a header that reads Fibromyalgia Diagnostic Criteria. 

Dan has no idea what that means.

“You just need to fill out this assessment,” says Dr. Kissel. And then, “I told you this one would be less painful.”

Phil chuckles. Dan does, too. He grabs the pen she offers him and starts reading.

The first question asks him to check off every area of the body where he’s had pain in the last week. Dan reads the list once, twice, three times before looking up at Dr. Kissel. 

“Is it stupid of me to check off all of them?”

“Not if it’s the truth,” she says. “That’s a very common response for people with this condition.”

“Oh,” says Dan. Something twists in his stomach at being included in that. “Okay.”

So he checks off all of them, his shoulders and arms and upper and lower back, and jaw and neck and chest and legs and buttocks. The only thing that goes unchecked in the last option that reads None of the above . Dan’s brain can’t even wrap around that idea.

The second question is called the Symptom Severity Score. It asks Dan to rate some symptoms on a scale of zero to three. It feels like a failure when he needs to check the box next to 1: slight or mild problems when it comes to cognitive symptoms. 

Dan’s pretty sure that part of his brain is the only part of him that still works properly. Most of the time.

The last question is just a list of symptoms that tells him to check off all the ones he’s had in the last week. He has to ask what some are. Some are things he has but never really thought were related. His gaze lingers on the word seizures for the first time, printed on a list that includes rashes and dry eyes.

It’s the first thing that’s really scared him. That box stays unchecked. He wonders how much it matters.

When he hands the test back to Dr. Kissel, she’s already nodding like she knows the answer it’ll contain. Dan’s pretty sure he does, too.

She writes a giant 28 in blue pen at the bottom of the page, and looks up at him with a sad sort of smile. 

“Okay, this confirms my suspicions,” she says. “Your symptoms appear to be caused by Fibromyalgia.”

Dan swallows, bobs his head. “Okay. Okay,” he says. “Uh, what does that mean?”

---

His legs feel different when he walks outside. Maybe because they still ache from the pressure point test she did, or because there’s a residual tingling from how much he was shaking during the appointment. Except the rest of Dan’s body feels different too.

The sunlight burns his tired eyes. Holding his head up takes too much energy. They stand on the curb waiting for their cab to show up and Dan’s chest aches and yet feels lighter than it has in days.

Weeks. Years, probably.

Dr. Kissel explained to him what it was, with a bunch of fancy medical terms he’ll need to google later. Something called central sensitization means his brain is fucked up and doesn’t know how to process shit and makes everything hurt and it fits so very well with how his body seems to experience the word that Dan doesn’t care that he doesn’t understand. 

He doesn’t know much right now. She recommended lifestyle changes as a first step and he has no idea what that’s going to entail. He doesn’t know what meds he might end up on, or how much better he’ll get. Dr. Kissel told him this was usually a life-long condition.

Dan feels like that should be terrifying. Except he’s grown to expect that whatever it was wouldn’t be an easy fix. 

He’s not dying, though. She told him that a few times, like reassurance among all the supposed-to-be-bad news. 

His weak legs sway under him after standing for too long. Phil reaches out to wrap an arm around his waist, pulling him close so Dan can lean against the steadiness of his frame. He doesn’t seem scared anymore. Maybe he will be again, once everything’s had time to sink in.

Phil leans in close, pressing his nose to the side of Dan’s head. “How are you feeling?”

Maybe Dan will be scared again, too. But he’s really not right now.

“Can I say something crazy?” he asks. 

“Go ahead.”

He pulls back, just enough to catch Phil’s gaze with his own, and says, “I think this is one of the best days of my life.”

Phil doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy. He smiles, and leans forward to press a kiss to Dan’s forehead, and holds him even tighter when his legs start to feel weak again.

The cab that pulls up looks just like the one that drove them here. Dan climbs into the back seat next to Phil, letting his head fall against the headrest, and feels himself smiling. 

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #dan and phil #flares #callie writes words

[tidtrek2020]

My names Mary Tidbury, I’m 21 and I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Antiphospholipid Syndrome when I was 14 years old. I’ve written my story; I really hope you all read it. Thank you in advance.

 On July 20th, 2012, my 14th birthday, I started to get bad pains when I breathed/ sneezed/ yawned/ laughed. I was away with my nan on one of her bowls holidays and I had a go at playing. On the final night of the holiday I started getting these pains when I breathed in and me being a young just turned 14 healthy child surrounded by all these older people who had aches and pains of their own, I bit my tongue and smiled my way through the night. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I’ve told my mum and dad about these pains at this point, so mums booked me a Drs appointment and dad has told me there’s nothing wrong I’ve just pulled a muscle from playing bowls. At this point the pain has increased I’m only taking short breathes, I learnt how to not sneeze, yawn and definitely not laugh. I went to the doctors and one of the first things they said to me was “it could be lupus, but then again you’re too young for that so we won’t test for it”. I would just like to point out in this moment that Lupus can affect anyone of any age. However, It mainly effects women of childbearing ages from 15+. I was one year younger than that age. Anyway carrying on, when I went to bed I had to find a comfy position so I could breathe normally and every night I would wake up and not be able to get comfy again so I’d wander the landing whimpering and crying about being in so much pain but not wanting to disturb anyone but also wanting everyone to wake up and take this pain seriously, I ended up having to sleep sitting up in a corner leaning against a pillow, it was the only way I could fall back asleep. Fast forward again a couple of months to end of October, I think I’d been tested for pretty much everything possible except for lupus. They finally after almost 4 months decided to scan my lungs. To which they found multiple blood clots on my lungs and it was extremely serious. It was then that they did the lupus test and found that I had SLE and APS. I would just like to say at this point I was only aware of the SLE. I was immediately referred to see a rheumatology Dr and the haematology Dr; I was but on Hydroxychloroquin by my rheumatology Dr and Warfarin and Fragmin injections by the haematology clinic. For a good few weeks I was making daily trips to the haematology clinic to check my INR it then turned to weekly when my INR was put in a range of 2-3 and I was taken off of the Fragmin injections. The clots had finally gone away and I was back to full health but left with an illness that no one knew about and so I felt very isolated and alone. I would play down the symptoms I was experiencing daily as no one around me knew what it was like to live with a chronic illness. So, it was a very lonely period of my life.

 In between 2012 and 2015 I started to fully get symptoms of lupus. I started to get bad joint pain, the worst of this was when I woke up one morning before school and I couldn’t move cos my hip was in so much pain. This does still happen occasionally, but I just need to take pain killers and it can usually help.

 Moving on to the end 2015, I’d left secondary school and I was working as a horticultural apprentice at a garden centre. I had been put onto Rivaoxyban in replacement of Warfarin. I started to get twitching movements in my right arm, I thought nothing of it at first I carried on with my life as usually over the next few months and into 2016 the movement I was getting in my right arm was worse than ever I had no control over it and my speech started slurring and my right leg had started moving involuntarily. I was signed off work and was undergoing tests left right and centre to try and figure out what was wrong with me, at first they thought it was a stroke so I was referred to a neurologist where I underwent numerous MRI scans and CAT scans but everything was coming back clear. I went back to my rheumatology Dr and was told that I had something called the Chorea movement. This is a flare up of lupus, I was put on Quetiapine which is an antipsychotic drug, and this suppressed the part of my brain that was telling my body parts to move and my speech to slur. By June 2016, I was back to full health and back working again and was taken off the Quetiapine.

 In this time also I was having double vision with my eyes. We think it was part of the chorea and I went to plenty of eye Drs but nothing. I still occasionally feel the pressure of it on my eyes, but it did slowly fade away in the end. But I’m still not 100% sure what that was as it was never confirmed.

 Moving on to 2017, now this next part I literally just don’t talk about because I find it very embarrassing but to be honest it was one of the scariest months of my life. In July I had been put on Sertraline, the Antidepressant. I was at a very low time in my life, and this was helping. Moving on to September of that year, being completely honest I also have PCOS (polycystic ovaries syndrome) so I never know when my periods are going to come, and I usually go 2 months between them. So basically, I started my first period since going onto Sertraline at the beginning of September. To cut a long story short, I bled for 4 weeks constantly and extremely heavily. I remember my mum and dad were away for the 1st 2 weeks and it was when my mum came back that I told her that I was worried because it just didn’t seem to be stopping, at this point I was very tired and had very little energy. A week later it was still going on but me and my mum had way before planned to go pick my brother Stanley up from Paris where he had spent a year as a cast member in Disneyland. 2 days before this trip I was sent home from work as I just wasn’t ok and my manager (who is luckily my bestie Lucy) saw this. However, this didn’t stop me from going on this trip with my mum.

 On Thursday 28th September me and mum travelled to Paris by car I pretty much slept the whole way, we got there late at night, so I basically just got out the car and then got into bed at the hotel and slept the whole night through. The next morning me and mum went off to spend the day at Disneyland Paris as Stanley could get us in for free, we went to Hollywood Studios where Stanley was and when he was on his break we went to queue to go on Crush’s Costa, we went through the backstage area and as we were 3rd in line I suddenly became really sick and dizzy. I turned to Stanley and I think I just looked at him ran back the way we came and threw up in the backstage area and went back outside to meet my mum. It was this moment I knew I seriously wasn’t ok. We carried on though and we stayed there for the entire day, I ended up in a wheelchair and I only went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride but all in all I still had a really great day being surrounded by the Disney magic. I can’t really remember the next day I had very little energy left and just know that we went shopping and I got the cosiest trackies and slippers. 

 On the Sunday we came back home. I have flashes of what happened in this journey and my mum has always told me it was the longest and scariest journey. We had to make a detour on our way home to drop Stanley off at Warwick where He was starting Uni, I remember just sleeping the entire way. I literally had no energy I was so tired and felt so ill. I remember having to get out of the car so that they could unpack all of Stanley’s stuff but then I carried on sleeping. I vaguely remember waking up when it was just me and mum in the car and saying, “don’t take me to A&E, just take me home I’ll just sleep it off”. 

 Next thing I know we’re at the JR, mums telling me to get out the car and go book myself in she’s just going to park. I didn’t make it to the reception, mum ended up finding me in the ladies bathroom. I can’t remember how long I was waiting in A&E for, but I remember just wanting to lay down and sleep. They kept on taking me into rooms and getting me to lie on the bed so they could review me and then send me back out to sit on the chairs back in the waiting room. The 3rd time they did this I remember just thinking fuck off and let me sleep, I closed my eyes and he was like ‘ok you can stay there’.

 That night I was admitted to hospital and proceeded to have 2 blood transfusions, they immediately stopped my blood thinners and was taken off of Sertraline as they believed that this had interacted with the Rivaroxyban and caused this to happen. I was in there for around a weeks’ time until I started to feel a bit livelier. It took me around 3 weeks to fully recover. I was now completely off the Sertraline and they changed my blood thinners to Apixaban. 

 I’ve never said this to anyone, but this scarred me really badly and still does to this day. The fear I have whenever my period comes around and is really heavy. It stops me from doing anything, I panic constantly and for the week it goes on for my anxiety is sky high. I panic if it goes on for a little too long or if it doesn’t look to be slowing down. I remember the time I was literally knocking on deaths door and makes me really emotional every time I think about it. 

 On the 3rd January 2018, I was at work which at the time was in a restaurant so lots and lots of walking around and long hours. I was half way through a 12 hour shift just finished my lunch break and went back to work when I suddenly started to get cramp in my calf on my left leg, it would build up after I’d walked a while and I’d ignore it and it would eventually become unbearable and I had to stop what I was doing and wait for it to go. 

 This went on for 2 weeks before I was adamant that something was not right and I believed it was a blood clot, I’d had a previous clot, so I knew what it felt like. My mum took me to minor injuries in Abingdon and they refused to review me because I wasn’t injured. They booked me an emergency appointment with my GP, and we went straight there, I went in and I said to them I think I have a blood clot in my leg. They asked me several questions and did a Doppler test on my ankles to test if they could hear my pulse. They could. The Dr turned to me and said you haven’t got a blood clot we can hear your pulse fine; you’ve probably just got a sprain and should be fine in 8 weeks’ time. 8 weeks come and go and I’m still in absolute agony when I walk, I’ve been diagnosed with social anxiety anyway so social situations become non-existent because I became so terrified of having to tell people I needed to slow down or stop completely that I didn’t got out. I carried on working and bit my tongue and got on with it because that’s what you got to do! I went back to the Drs after 8 weeks as I was still getting cramp when I walked a short distance. I go through a Doppler test and they are now struggling to find my pulse in my left ankle. A week later I get a call from the Dr to say that they are referring me to the Vascular unit at the John Radcliffe. My appointment was booked for the 18th April but was cancelled and they had scheduled a new appointment in May. I couldn’t make this appointment as me and my eldest brother Will were going away for a month from the 10th May - 10th June to travel round Europe. I tried to get an earlier appointment so that I could be well for the trip, but this didn’t happen. The week before we went away, I went out for dinner with my parents and when I came home, I started to get a dead right leg and after about 20 minutes it finally went away. The next day at work I found that I was no longer getting cramp in my left leg, but I was getting it on my right. I carried on as I would as I was going to see a specialist after I got back. This trip was the best month of my life and despite being in agony I took plenty of codeine and powered through. I think this was the first time I didn’t let Lupus/APS flare up win (at the time I didn’t know it was a lupus thing but still) but usually I hole myself up and become very depressed (even more so than usual). But this time I was outside every single day and night and getting fresh air constantly. I got back on the 10th June and my appointment wasn’t scheduled until the 18th. Me and my sister Annie went to see Ed Sheeran at Wembley stadium on the 15th, coming out of that show I think it was the first time in the 6 months I’d been experiencing this pain that my sister actually realised how much agony I was in. We were walking back to the station I was powering through and pretending I was fine and speed walking; I just couldn’t do it I was on the verge of bursting into tears and sobbing and Annie looked over at me and she made us stop.

 At my appointment with the consultant on the 18th he performed more Doppler tests and he came to the conclusion that I didn’t have a blood clot everything felt and sounded fine. He was going to set up a scan for me just so they could look at my veins and arteries, but he was 100% positive that the scan results would come back clear...

 Fast forward to the 10th July, 3 days before I was due to have the scan me and my brother Stanley were going into Abingdon to do some shopping, we’d parked on the 3rd floor of the multi-storey car park. We got back to my car after walking up 3 flights of stairs and my right leg was fully cramped up, I sat in the car and said to my brother that we’re going to have to wait I need to let my leg to stop cramping. A couple of minutes turned to 5 and it still wasn’t going if anything it was getting worse. I’d gotten out the car tried walking it off, taken my shoe off but none of this worked, I was in complete agony I turned to Stanley and told him he would need to drive us home. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car with my eyes scrunched shut because I could feel tears coming but I just breathed through it, we finally got home and I hopped over to the sofa and as soon as I sat down I lead there and just remember letting out a huge wail of a cry and continued to cry my eyes out. I was in so much pain Stanley called my mum and dad and they came home from work. I remember thinking I can’t see an end to this pain, I was so scared, and I was even begging everyone to just make it stop. I was vomiting because of how much pain I was in. 

 The only way I can describe this pain is imagine getting cramp in your calf muscle, and imagine it not going and getting more and more painful, that’s what it was like. 

My mum had rung 999 and an ambulance was on their way. They finally got there, and they ran some tests on me and took me away to the hospital. I can’t remember how long I was waiting in A&E before a Dr saw me but I know before they did I had a cat scan of my legs, I was wheeled into a room where the on call vascular Dr told me I had 3 clots in the arteries in my legs. One on my right groin, one behind my right knee and one on my left groin. I was being admitted to hospital and needed emergency surgery to take the one out of my right groin. The next morning, I was first on the table. My mum was stuck in traffic trying to get to the hospital and I was sat in my room with all these Drs and nurses coming in drawing on my leg about what they need to do. I remember being absolutely terrified that I wouldn’t wake up and that I’d die without telling my family how much I love them. This without a doubt was the most terrifying hour of my life. Not even 5 minutes before they take me down my mum walks through the door and although I was terrified of what was to come, I’ve never felt so much relief. 

 The surgery luckily went really well. Later, that day they do a few more scans on me so they can figure out where these clots have started. They did an echocardiogram on my heart and saw something there but couldn’t get a good look at it, so they decided to look at it with a camera. I was heavily sedated so I would fall asleep and they could stick a camera down my throat. Knowing my luck of course the meds wore off 5 minutes to quickly and I woke up whilst they still had the camera down my throat. I was a very panicked experience and I think my throat was cut up for about a week afterwards.

 As a result of this scan they found a massive clot on my heart. At this point I was having infusions of heparin and was back on warfarin. Trying to get these clots gone. 

 I was in hospital for 16 days, one of which was my 20th Birthday. I spent 6 days in the vascular ward and 10 days in the heart centre before I was finally given the all clear to leave. This isn’t where this story ends though, I was still getting cramp in my right leg so In January 2019 I had minor surgery under local anaesthetic to sort out a narrowing in my artery behind my knee. I’ve also been left with scarring on my heart from the blood clot and will need to have my aortic valve replaced at some point in my life. 

Once my right leg was sorted and the cramp was no more, I realised that my left leg still was cramping up. I went for more scans and it was confirmed I needed major surgery again to remove the last clot.

 I went in on the 6th of November 2019 and was out by the 8th. Surgery went very well, I also can’t thank the nurse who was on every night I was there enough for how much she got me through, I was very distressed for the time I was there, and she was an absolute godsend to me! 

 I had a very tricky recovery from this op I was signed off for 2 months in total as my wound became infected. 

 I’m now happy to say that I’m fully recovered and in no pain.

 I just want to say I know there are a lot of people who are worse off than me but this is my story and it’s fucking shit and has left me both mentally and physically scarred. The last 8 years have been incredibly hard but I’ve hopefully come out the other end of it now, but I still find the memories painful and writing this has left me in tears as for some stupid reason I feel like I’m attention seeking when I talk about all this stuff and I’m really panicking about putting this out there. 

 Anyway, thank you for reading... 

 Peace out ✌🏼

https://www.lupusuk.org.uk/

https://www.mind.org.uk/

https://www.aps-support.org.uk/

#lupus #lupusuk #sle #systemic lupus erythematosus #lupusawareness #lupusproblems #lupusfighter #aps #hughssyndrome #antiphospholipid syndrome #invisible illness #chronicdisease #chronicillness #autoimmunedisease #autoimmunewarrior #autoimmune #chronic #hospital #sister #family #bloodthinners #warfarin #hydroxychloroquine #rivaroxaban #apixaban #rituximab #anemia #polycystic ovarian syndrome #depression #mind