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armin-ask-mcl · 5 years

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Don’t Think Twice (NathxCandy)

[[Holy fuck, I wrote something not related to Armin. Anywho, hope you enjoy. I’m still slowly getting back into writing, it’ll be forever before I don’t suck as much. Based on a Candy who dated Castiel, at the end of episode 6 MCLUL conversation with Nathaniel. Song inspired by Don’t Think Twice from KH3 OST. Yes, I put in a Castlevania anime reference. Alucard and Trevor is Nath and Cassy, fight me.]]

She paced back and forth slowly in the small dorm room. He remained still in one place yet twisting his hands and arms restlessly. The two were locked in conversation, the air between them heavy. “I don’t know what to think anymore, Nath…” She sighed with exasperation, collapsing onto her bed.

The remainder of her energy she tried to use to keep engaged with him, an exhausting endeavor itself. “One minute you’re funny and nice. The next you’re worked up and easily agitated. Then you want to argue with professors just to get yourself out of school?” Candy grunted pulling up half her body to sit up while on her bed. “I get it, you changed. And that’s fine! But you’re changing so much it’s hard to get a read on you just for that day.”

Nathaniel shook his head and looked down at the floor. A few moments passed and neither said anything. She took it as a sign to continue.

“I see you one second and you save me. The next, you’re there to support me to go to Cass’s concert only to berate me from helping you and Amber.” She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned into them. “I wish you could tell me what’s going on. I only want to listen. I’m tired of hearing rumors from people as my only source into your life.”

At that moment, he looked back up at her. “What kind of rumors?”

She rolled her eyes, having a flood of conversations from the past few weeks come to mind. “That you get in fights, that you go to parties, you hang around junkies. That you’re involved in drugs? I really doubt any of the last bit, but you have people so scared of you that they run away instead of helping.”

His expression darkened, his eyes narrowing and focusing on a random spot on the wall behind her. It was becoming too difficult to look directly at her. “Maybe they were right to run away.”

“You know that’s not true. Nath, I’m worried about you.”

He ran his hand through his messy blond hair. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here then, so let’s address it.” He finally moved over and sat next to her on the bed. He wasn’t happy about being too direct with her, but he found it necessary. Accidentally hurting her feelings was an ill side effect. “I feel like we are… becoming close. Something I didn’t think would happen, especially with you.” She opened her mouth to respond but he gently held his finger in front of her lips. “I mean, let’s be honest. You get into people’s business like crazy. For years now, Candy. You need a hobby.” He grinned wickedly, lowering his hand down from her now frowning mouth.

“In all seriousness, I know you worry. And I can’t stop that.”

“—Unless you tell me what’s going on!” She started speaking over him stubbornly.

“And!” He raised his volume to match hers for a second, just as stubborn. “I really do want to talk, I do want to open up… but I can’t right now.” The bravado crumbled, and he started reaching out for her hand only to stop an inch above it. His voice ached with grief and sincerity. “Right now, I can’t have you chasing after me being worried. Focus on yourself, please.” He started to move his hand away, but Candy gently used her free hand to push his down on the hand he reached for before, sandwiching his.

Trying to ignore her action, he bore his gaze at her. “I don’t want you to get in trouble. And you know that rumors are just that. But if you believe them, if you think I’m just as worthless as they make me out to be then go. Run. I’m not interested in causing you pain.” His hand then lightly pressured her own. His golden eyes settled down, as if he couldn’t stand looking at her when she delivered the final blow. While she knew what she wanted to say, she waited. She hoped he would give her opening; a hole in the tall fortress he built up.

Seconds of silence passed that felt like minutes. With a concentrated breath, he finally added “But if you know…if you know I’m not a lost cause. Then,” He paused very briefly, taking in a quick breath and straightening his posture. A sign that his wall would be back up soon. “Then maybe think twice before you run away. If you do, I don’t wanna know…”

Candy shifted her body to face Nathaniel more and lifted his hand in her own. He would never admit that his knuckles were in pain if she held them tight, so she remained tender. “Nath,” He closed his eyes for a moment before returning the regard he could feel coming from her. “I have never, not once, considered running from you.”

And he finally he broke, a laugh escaping from his stoic character. “Yeah, you don’t really… yeah, you’re a bit reckless, you know?” With consideration, he removed himself from her touch and stood up on the bed. Though he was acting calm and that nothing happened, the tension in the room lifted. “I better get going soon. Looks like you were getting ready for bed. I wouldn’t want to keep you away from your lover.”

Candy choked on air a bit at hearing the lover part. “Um, ex-excuse me?” Surely, he didn’t mean Castiel. The two barely reacquainted lately and there was a lot of awkward feelings on the situation.

With his back to her, Nathaniel stretched his neck and shoulders before looking at her smugly. “I meant you and the oreo crumbs around your mouth.”

Blood rushed to Candy’s cheeks, a hue of blush spreading quickly across her face. Instead of letting him sit there, grinning away like a jerk she wiped away all the crumbs and smiled proudly with her clean face. His smile widened. “Oh, taking it to bed already? Wild one,” And he laughed seeing her try and brush away all the crumbs on her bed. “Oh hush, and go already, you nerd.” She mumbled, cleaning off her comforter.

He shrugged, about to be on his way when he smacked his own forehead. “Ugh, I forgot. I came here for a real reason,” he said, sweeping all the emotional bits that had just happened under a rug. He walked back to her bed and now crumbly floor to hand her a CD case. She raised her eyebrow at it, taking the case and looking it over. She quickly gasped and brightly smiled. “It’s Cass’s CD! Oh my gosh, please tell me the terrible things people think you’re doing is bootlegging his band’s merchandise.” He snorted and bit his bottom lip, pulling it in while smiling back at her. “You caught me, Candy.”

She ran her fingers across the black cover, opening it up quickly to find the lyric book inside. She wanted to tell him how much it meant to her to have this, but he already knew. He must have. The least she could do was look back at him and smile sweetly. “Thanks Nath.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t thank me yet. I just want you to hear how bad they are without the overwhelming concert experience.”

Unimpressed with his response, she quipped back at him. “Oh yeah? You say that, but I have a feeling you go home and wear a ‘Castielove’ oversized shirt to bed.”

Nath finally head back to his route to leave the dorm room. “You’re charming, as always dear.” As he opened the door and started closing it halfway, he muttered beneath his breath “I can see what he saw now.”

Unaware of what he said, Candy continued to play with the CD and ignoring the obvious responsibilities screaming at her in her room. She curled up into her comforter and started going through the lyric book, hunting down songs she heard at the concert.

Meanwhile, the bar down town had started closing. People started talking to their designated drivers, silly drunks exclaiming the fun was over. Castiel remained hunched over at the bar, sipping away his beer while scrolling through his phone. The bar stool next to him screeched slightly as another patron pulled up the seat to sit in. He requested a cold beer before the night finally ended and the bartender admitted to only one since he would close soon.

Without looking up, the red head guitarist addressed his neighbor. “Didn’t think you’d be back here so soon. How did it go?”

Nathaniel groaned as he sat up and waited for his drink. “Why do you want to know? It’s my business.”

“You want me to knock ya out? Keep your smartass comments to yourself, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel passed an annoyed glance at Castiel. “I don’t care for your music, so I went over to Candy’s place and gave her that CD.” He thanked the bartender when he received his opened bottle and took a swig of beer.

Castiel’s mouth twitched slightly, almost as if he was going to smile. “Thought you would.” He took a longer sip, trying to finish his drink before heading out for the night. Nathaniel’s gold eyes glared at his once high school rival. “I’m not your messenger after that. Here on out, you’re going to be direct with her.” The other shrugged.

The two sat in silence as the once crowded bar quieted down. The employees left them alone. One a rising Rockstar, the other a frequent patron. While they vehemently disagreed, now they were calm and quiet. It was the only good quality time the two could have. Finally, Castiel finished his drink and paid his tab to the keep. He hopped off the stool and said nothing as he started to leave. “You know,” Nathaniel started, “I see what you saw once.”

Castiel looked back at Nath and shook his head. “Wrong. I never stopped seeing.” Nathaniel pushed his unfinished drink back to the bartender with his payment, seemingly unphased by the other. Nath got up himself and started walking out, not intending to add anything to the conversation.

“Hey Nath,” Castiel called out from across the bar. Nathaniel looked back languidly and furrowed his brows quickly at the sight. Castiel grinned, flipping him off. “Eat shit and die.”

Nathaniel flipped him off, in this weird mutual standoff. “Yes, fuck you too.” The two chuckle as they go their separate ways for the night.

[[If you enjoyed, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi! Need help with dog funds for my little boy Jacob who has developed severe arthritis. ]]

#my candy love #mcl #mclul #mclul nathaniel #mcl nathaniel #my candy love university life #mclul castiel #mcl castiel #drabble #drabbles

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jayne-hecate-writer · 6 years

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The Ocean of Self Hatred

Times have been hard and I was forced to step away from my writing for my own sanity.

There are a number of reasons for my sudden departure from creativity and after several months, I am now back to a small degree and I can explain what small events caused this flight into fear.

The first thing that happened was that I was given some very serious negative feedback about my writing, it ridiculed my sentence structure, made fun of my character development and was harshly critical of my cover design. I am aware of my own limitations so I could concede many of the points made, but not to the severity of them. It went beyond critical reviewing and stepped into mockery of my art form which as a new writer, took me right back to my childhood and the mockery I received for my poor spelling and grammar.

As a child, I went to around thirteen different schools and I moved so often that I did not spend more than a couple of years in one place. The result of this was that I had huge gaps in my education and was missing some of the fundamental skills required to write and spell correctly. These missing sections of my education gave me some rather mediocre exam results on leaving school and a school report that wrote me off as educationally underwhelming. So on leaving school I jumped ship, right into college, topping up the missing sections and ended up going to two universities to get a degree and then a post graduate certificate.

The same kind of thing can be applied to my writing. I have had no formal training as a writer, my degree was actually science, which is an entirely different form of creativity. Self editing long form stories takes a huge amount of effort and after reading the novel for the sixth time in a month, even simple mistakes made while editing are easily missed. I am also not a designer and I have not a single qualification in any form of artistic endeavour, so cover design was a real challenge for me. It would be very easy to take these things and add a negative spin, turning them from real reasons into bitter excuses. But I am going to stop that right now. They are not excuses. My first book was a great adventure for me. I had not the first clue on book design, despite reading so many books for my own pleasure. I did all of the work myself, which I then placed on Amazon Kindle to the complete indifference of the publishing world. My partner and I spent an entire year sending off the required details to agents and publishers, receiving well over three hundred rejections until we had one single bite of interest. (Technically, this is not true, we had several bites, but most of them were from vanity publishers who would take my work and simply print it, at great cost so that I could then sell them myself.)

The one good bite came from a publisher who stated that they were greatly interested in the first two chapters that the submission required and they wanted to read the rest of the book. The book was supplied and we were told that after six months, they would be back in touch. Sadly we never heard from them again and that was why the book got put on Kindle. I moved on because I had other stories to tell. I also joined a writers group and began spending time with other writers, honing my skills.

So my first full length book is amateurish and it has have many flaws, maybe even several spelling mistakes that I have not spotted and yet it stands as a real achievement. Some of my friends have been very kind with their comments, they understood what the book meant, where it came from and what I had achieved.

The criticism I received for the book rocked me from my rowing boat of self belief, or maybe self deceit. It told me that I had not done very well, that my attempts were worthless and that I should not have bothered. Actually, that is not what the criticism told me at all, that is what I told myself afterwards. The criticism told me what I already knew, that the book had some flaws and some bits of it could have been done better. But my own lack of self love took a long negative dive into self disgust for having even tried. I punished me for being a beginner, for not being like Penguin Books, for not being good enough and in so many ways I am still doing this, acting out this brutal regime of self sabotage and it is fucking crippling me.

The second attack on my creativity came when I was set to be reassessed for my disability by the agencies that we have in the UK. There is currently a feeling here that disability is somehow shameful, that disabled people should be thankful for what little handouts the state gives us and we should shut up our moaning. Opinion on what makes disability has in some ways been handed to the common man in the street and the results of this are that there is a growing trend for hatred towards disabled people on social media and all of the other places where the angry hate filled slack jawed mouth breathers can find easy targets to attack with their bile. When I saw a sign on the door of a disabled toilet in a supermarket, that was clearly produced on the office printer and read “Not all disabilities are visible, please be kind to disabled people”, I knew that things had got nasty.

The self sabotage set in once more and my guilt and shame for having mental and physical health problems went into overdrive. The assessment by the benefits team is far from over and right now I am living in dread of the report that will be written on me. Reports from several disability charities in the UK show that I am not alone in living with these fears though. Disability assessments are so stressful that disabled people would rather live in poverty and suffering, than go through the system that is supposed to support them. For me, it got so bad that in desperation I contacted my local politician and asked for them to step in and put a stop to one of the things I was facing. The bitter irony of this is that this politician is the same man who voted in parliament to reduce benefits available to disabled people, because disabled people should be out earning for themselves! The levels of selfishness and inhumanity shown by this Government disgust me and yet I was forced to ask them for help.

The anxiety that grew within me, leading up to my assessment, got so out of hand that I was barely able to function. I stopped going outside, I certainly stopped driving and I stopped interacting as I withdrew into the shadows putting a stop to almost all of my artistic efforts. This was not a safe place for me to be because this was where my inner demons berated me and beat me down for my weakness. It seems that I truly love punishing myself, often far more brutally and to greater depth than any judicial system would consider sinking to.

I may possibly say that I am now swimming in the bleak ocean waters of self hate rather than drowning in them, but I am not yet ready to walk across the beach of self sabotage or even step into the quiet cafe of self doubt to have a cup of safe, mildly chilled anxiety. I think that this analogy is starting to leak now, but I still have some way to go before we can let it flow away. Despite all of the dark waters of misery I am swimming in, stood on the distant seawall of happiness is a group of good friends who are waving at me and even holding the warm soft beach towel of comfort. These are the people who tell me that my creativity is good enough to play with, that I should try my best to do what I once loved and most importantly of all that my self sabotage is not needed.

The last review I wrote for a piece of theatre (is this another analogy, like a slice of creamy mime or a side salad of death metal?) was praised by several people who mean a great deal to me or that I even admire. It was even commented on by the theatre themselves who were very pleased with it, because it was fair and it was balanced. Criticism has to be balanced. Some one once told me that there are no bad writers, just books that don’t interest us (I would dispute this, but then my Kindle recommendations were recently filled up with awful rubbish written by Holocaust deniers, after I looked at one such book because I did not believe that such things could exist!). So if my book fails to interest someone, so be it. I wrote that book because I had a story to tell, the people living in my head wanted to get out. At the moment, the sequel is stalled, like a broken down Morris Marina on a mudflat (what is it with the fucking ocean references?!) waiting for the tide to go out so that it can be recovered. I am not yet ready to continue my writing, but the voices of the characters in my unfinished story want me to continue.

I don’t know when I will start working on my writing again, but it will happen. There are a few things I need to work on first (my obsession with miserable oceans for a start!) such as my self sabotage and self doubt. Trying to feel worthwhile as an artist takes effort. Anxiety and depression are exhausting and make such efforts almost impossible. Doing it without medication is harder still, but living on medication is even less desirable because although they make me level (like a flat ocean that is freezing over by any chance?), that level is lower than it should be and I lose all of my creativity all together.

So do I have any words of wisdom worth sharing? Maybe, maybe not. I can tell you that self doubt and anxiety are crippling. Good friends tell you the truth, but do so positively. I can also tell you that creating anything is a great achievement. Self publishing is bloody hard, to do it well requires a huge amount of effort or a bloody deep purse (full of doubloons from a pirate ship no doubt!), so if you are also working hard on making or creating, bloody good for you. You inspire me because you are a shining example of what it means to be an artist. Well done you, have a hug.

If you want to see some excellent examples of creativity in action, buy the last book released by my writing club. You could also get yourself on Youtube and check out Adam Savage’s Tested because that is always inspiring. There is also Sariel’s Technic Lego channel which is amazing. Also, go and give some of your time to the awesome Bucket Head Props and their friend Ace Cosplay who frankly are both amazing. There is no end to the adventures that can be had in creativity of any type and all of these people prove that beautifully.

#disability #DWP #pip #self loathing #self publishing #self sabotage #anxiety #depression #antidepressants #creative writing #self love #writers block #despair #misery #amazon kindle

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