Good Enough || s.r

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader

warnings: overthinking | cursing | low mood | insecurities |  lmk if I have missed anything ♡

word count: 1.9k

a/n: thank you for the love on my first fic, I hope this one loves up to expectations. i pretty much just wrote this in order to comfort my own insecurities so maybe other people can relate. my requests will always be open  ♡

That evening your phone had gone off every couple of minutes, blasting your obnoxious ringtone over and over again; yet it was still on your kitchen counter where you left it that morning. You refused to pick it up, not wanting to look at the numerous text messages and missed calls that were on the home page. It was Sunday and your boyfriend was due to return from work, but over the last three days that he was gone, you had fallen into an awfully big hole of overthinking. 

Seventy-two hours was a long time to have your brain constantly telling you that you weren’t good enough for the man that you called your boyfriend, Spencer Reid. Take away the few hours that you were sleeping in between, the last three days have been nothing but torture for you. Hence, the reason that you were ignoring his phone calls. He had just finished a case with the FBI, the last thing he had to deal with was you being low and insecure. It had taken six months for these feelings to start surfacing within your mind but once you started shedding the tears, there was no going back.

Spencer sighed in frustration, his phone indicating that he was running on low battery. He quickly clicked into your name again, watching the phone dial your number before the screen went completely black. Spencer hissed a number of curse words that gained the attention of his male companion, who was sitting closest to him in the bullpen. Derek’s brows creased together and he dropped the pen that he was playing with to focus his attention on the young doctor. 

“You ok, kid?” He asked, turning in his office chair to face Spencer’s desk.

Spencer looked up from his dead phone that he tossed by his pile of files, his curls hanging loosely over his face. His mouth opened and closed for a minute, reluctant to get advice from Derek before he shrugged it off. “Nothing.” He simply replied. 

Derek hummed in acknowledgement, “Very rarely do I hear Dr. Reid curse, but if you would rather me get Penelope or JJ to question you, I can do that.” 

“Please don’t do that,” The skinny brunette whined softly, weighing out the options in his head before deciding to trust Derek on this one. “It’s Y/N. She hasn’t been answering my calls all day.” 

“Ah, girl problems.” Derek teased, his pearl whites gleaming under the bright lights in the bullpen. 

Spencer groaned, standing up from his desk. “Forget about it.” He snapped, starting to pack up his belongings to head home for the night.

“Kid, I’m joking. Look, you’ve been gone for three days. Just pop by her apartment on your way home, okay?” Derek suggested which earned a grimace from Spencer, “Bring flowers, tell her you missed her.” 

“I did miss her.” Spencer sighed, his hand brushing his hair from his face.

“Exactly. You have been going out for six months, it shouldn’t be strange just dropping by.” 

“Um, okay… Thanks, Derek.” The younger boy replied, forcing a shy smile in his direction. 

Spencer started walking out of the combined offices before Derek’s voice halted him, he looked over his shoulder. “Behave, you minx.” This only resulted in Spencer rolling his eyes and stalking out of the room towards the elevators. On the way to your place, his thoughts began to linger, maybe it was a bad idea just to show up. He shouldn’t be this nervous going to be his girlfriend’s house but deep down, he knew there was something wrong. You always replied to his messages and never once sent his calls to voicemail. His thoughts started to jump to different conclusions, did he do something wrong and not realize it? 

 The sudden silence was oddly irking you; your phone had stopped ringing and you didn’t notice that you were taking comfort from your ringtone until it was gone. You couldn’t say you blamed Spencer for giving up trying to contact you, it wasn’t your intention on keeping him on the ropes all day. It was just that you weren’t sure that you were going to be able to answer the phone and pretend like everything was fine. You couldn’t pretend anymore that you lived up to his standard; he was the most intelligent man you have ever met, with a number of PhDs and BAs, and you just about got your BA degree. It was silly for you to compare yourself to an actual genius but it was more so the fact that he deserved someone that he could hold an actual factual and statistical conversation with; not someone that had to research nearly everything that he brought up. 

The empty feeling in your stomach from not eating all day came alive and you climbed out of bed, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Your eyes were puffed and your hair was a bird’s nest, the fact that overthinking caused you to look and feel like this made you even sicker. You had just reached your kitchen door when the sound of your doorbell blasted around the apartment, grimacing you knew exactly who it was going to be. You weren’t expecting anyone else to appear at your door at eleven in the evening. 

You slowly walked to the door, your sock-clad feet sliding across the wooden floors. You peeked through the peephole and your heart soared with the sight of an exhausted looking Spencer standing there, a beautiful bouquet of flowers in his grasp. 

Opening the door, you hid half of your body with it but worry immediately covered Spencer’s expression. “Hi…” He said, his voice soft and he tried to step forward but you didn’t budge the door, “What’s wrong?” 

“Spence, I just want to be alone for a little while.” You whispered, avoiding his begging honey-brown eyes that were drooping. His heart tugged at the sound of your voice croaking, and it confirmed his theory that you had spent hours upon hours crying. “I’m sorry-” You attempted to close the door but Spencer stuck his foot in the way and you sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to let this drop.

“I can’t leave here knowing that you’re hurting. Let me in, talk to me.” Spencer begged, and you couldn’t deny him entry anymore. It killed you seeing him looking so worried. As soon as Spencer stepped foot into your apartment, he wrapped his arms around you. The flowers brushed the back of your head and you collapsed into his embrace. He was warm and you were thankful that he was wearing a grey sweater, it felt soft against your skin and when you breathed in his scent of coffee and cotton detergent, you felt grounded again. His lips pecked into the side of your head, a hand coming up to caress your cheek as he pulled away. “Why are you crying, princess?” 

“I’m not crying now…” You replied, a pout evident on your face. 

“Why were you crying?” Spencer corrected himself, no hint of the worry lessening on his features. 

“I… It’s nothing.” 

“Clearly it is something. Tell me.” Spencer pushed, his thumb rubbing up and down your cheek gently. You sighed, your eyes closing which resulted in a tear escaping down your cheeks, running onto his fingers. “Oh, baby.” 

“Spence…” You started, reaching to cover his hand with yours and you peeled it off your face. “I have spent the last three days thinking and thinking and thinking…” 

“About what?” Spencer wrapped his fingers around yours, a feeling of heaviness erupting in his stomach. 

“You deserve someone so much better than me-” 

“Don’t start, Y/N, please…” Spencer’s head dropped, sadness radiating from the pair of you. 

“No, no, let me finish. Please.” You begged, he nodded in response and watched as you took a shaking breath in. The rant that you had created in the shower two days ago flowed off your tongue in one breath. “You deserve someone that matches your personality more than I do, someone that reads more books or watches old films in different languages. You need someone to challenge you in an intellectual way and I… I just can’t do that. I’m average when it comes to general knowledge, hell, I don’t even know what my IQ is. A… And I don’t want you to wake up one morning bored and regretting ever starting this.” 

Spencer whimpered softly, stepping closer to your shaking body. You avoided eye contact again but he reached behind you to place the flowers on the locker and he cupped your face with both of his hands. “Look at me.” He snapped softly, it was forceful but filled with love. He used his thumb to wipe the fresh tears away. 

“Spence…”

“No. Listen to me. The last six months have been the happiest days of my life.” You tried to object but he shushed you, “Listen to me.” He repeated, squeezing your face slightly and you sunk into his touch again. His lips were trembling but they remained their pink shade similar to the tint in his cheeks. “I don’t want someone to challenge me, I challenge myself enough. I want someone that makes me laugh, makes me happy, makes me feel like a kid again. You bring out a side to me I didn’t know even existed, you brought light back into my life and I enjoy teaching you things. I don’t want you to recite the whole Bible for me, I don’t need that. I just need you, I need you being happy and yourself because I love you and you are too good for me.” Spencer whispered the last sentence, and he sucked in a breath. 

“You’ve never said that before.” You replied, your heart beating rapidly against your chest. 

“I never thought I’d make you feel that you’re were not good enough.” 

Your heart sank at his words, regret cursing through your veins. “It wasn’t you, Spence. It was all up there.” You muttered, pointing to your head and for the first time that evening, Spencer shot you one of his smiles. The one that showed that he understood. 

“Just promise me one thing.” 

“Anything.” You replied, wrapping your arms around his torso. 

Spencer smiled at the gesture and brought his lips down to yours, connecting them gently. Your eyes fluttered closed, embracing every erupting feeling that he was setting off. His hand slid into your mess of hair, bringing your closer and he deepened the kiss. His tongue danced around yours, and you were melting into him with every passing second. Just as a moan escaped passed your lips, Spencer pulled away. “Talk to me if you ever feel like this again.” 

You nodded in response and he was happy with that. Spencer untangled himself from you and picked the flowers back up, he walked deeper into your apartment but you stood there, your eyes following his every move. “Spencer,” You called out before he disappeared into the kitchen, he turned to look at you, his eyes sparkling and he waited for you to speak, “I love you too.” 

The smile he returned sent your heart soaring and he shook his head, a chuckle erupting from his stomach. “I know.”

🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻

please please please let me know what you thought of this! It’s my first s.r fic so I would love some feedback!

Summary: "Steve absolutely wasn’t nervous. Compared to every intense and grueling Avengers mission he’s completed, taking care of a sick kid was a walk in the park right? Except when this sick kid was also one of the most precious things within Tony Stark’s life and if anything were to happen to this boy there’s no doubt in Steve’s mind that Tony would dump him in an instant.

So no, Steve was not nervous at all."

OR

Tony has meetings, Steve has anxiety, and poor Peter just has a fever.

A/N: It’s Sicktember 2021! Very excited for this month and to see all of the amazing works! Not to mention it gives me an excuse and the motivation to write as many sickfics as I can! And let's see if I do because writer's block is too real right now :) Anyway thank you @sicktember for coming up with this month of prompts and I hope you all like this little fic! Read it here or click the link to read on AO3! 

Steve absolutely wasn’t nervous. Compared to every intense and grueling Avengers mission he’s completed, taking care of a sick kid was a walk in the park right? Except when this sick kid was also one of the most precious things within Tony Stark’s life and if anything were to happen to this boy there’s no doubt in Steve’s mind that Tony would dump him in an instant.

So no, Steve was not nervous at all.

Tony, however, could see right through the false confidence.

“Relax, Stevie! Good lord, I can feel you panicking from over here.” Tony jokes as he enters the living room and gathers his briefcase and Stark gadgets for his day of meetings.

Steve jolts a bit as he looks up at Tony. “Huh? I-I’m not panicking.”

“You were just glaring daggers into Petey over there, hon.” Tony points out, to which Steve just shrugs with a blush. “There’s really no need to worry Cap, the kid is probably just gonna sleep and cough a bit until I’m back, alright? And if he wakes up and gets antsy or something just heat up some of the soup I made and throw on Adventure Time. Pete’s an easy kid, I swear.”

Steve stands from his chair with a deep breath and nods in understanding. Tony strides over to the super-soldier and takes his face in his hands. “There’s no one I trust more with Peter than you. Except maybe Pepper, but she can literally do everything.”

Steve laughs at that and bends down to give Tony a quick peck on the lips. They break apart so Tony can give Peter’s hair a quick ruffle. His hand pauses on the boy’s forehead as he gauges his fever. His lips quirk downward, he does not love the temperature the kids running at the moment.

With a sigh, he stands up and walks hand in hand with Steve to the elevator. “I think his fever went up, so just keep an eye on that. Friday is down for maintenance so you’ll probably want to wake him up in a bit to take his temperature manually.” The elevator doors open and the super couple shares one last peck before Tony steps in. “I’m just thirty floors down! You’re gonna do great! I love you both!” Tony calls as the doors close and suddenly Steve is alone. Well, save for the snoring spider-teen on the couch.

Steve wanders back to the living room, nervously glancing at Peter as he does. The poor kid is basically in the exact opposite of his regular state. On a normal day, Peter was a bright ball of action, seemingly unable to stop talking or moving at all. But that wasn’t the Peter he saw now.

Instead, this Peter was silent. Sick. There’s an eerie ambiance in the air and Steve hates it.

So, to quell the weird vibe, he turns the tv to TCM, (un-ironically his favorite channel as the rest of the team loved to tease him about) and sets it at a low volume so he doesn’t wake the kid.

He’s just about to the end of an old western film when he hears Peter groan and shuffle around on the couch. The sick teen sits up wearily, his hair a mess and his eyes unfocused. Not to mention his cheeks are deeply flushed with fever, which has clearly gotten worse in the last forty-five minutes.

“S’eve?” Peter slurs as he spots the super solider.

Steve’s focus quickly turns to the kid, who looks undoubtedly sicker. “Hey, Pete. How you feeling, pal?” Stupid question, Rogers. He thinks to himself.

Peter sniffs and shivers with sudden chills. “Mm, n-not v’ry good.” His voice cracks as tears fill to his eyes. His sleep-addled brain catching up to and feeling the full effect of his feverish achy body. He can’t stop his breath as it hitches and the tears spill over. It just hurts so much.

Steve’s up and at the boy’s side almost inhumanly fast, doing his best to comfort him. Unfortunately, he’s no expert on Peter care (i.e, he’s not Tony). If there’s one thing he does know, however, is that you can never go wrong playing with the kid’s hair, which Steve had quickly learned by watching his boyfriend. And while Tony was the “Peter scalp massage pro”, Peter definitely wasn’t picky about who or how. The kid simply just wanted his hair touched.

So Steve did just that. The larger man was relieved to find that the action had the desired effect—Peter had calmed almost instantly, curling up against Steve’s side— but the super soldier was quickly fulled with nerves again as he felt the nearly scalding heat coming from the kid.

When Peter had relaxed enough, Steve grabbed the thermometer Tony had left on the coffee table. Peter spots the machine in Steve’s hand and opens his mouth, accustomed to the routine after being sick all day yesterday as well.

With the thermometer under his tongue, Peter lets his eyes close as they wait for the reading to be done. When it is, Peter lightly jumps at the beep before burrowing back into Steve’s side as the blonde takes the thermometer back and reads its results.

And while Peter looks peaceful once again, Steve is panicking. 103.5. Steve’s not a scientist but he knows that’s not a good temperature for the body to be.

“Friday can you- ah.” Oh, right. Steve remembers that the AI was down for maintenance. Instead, he looks around for his phone, ready to research exactly what he should do for a kid with a near brain-melting fever.

Steve bites the inside of his cheek as he, again, remembers. He doesn’t have a phone right now, as he sat with his last one in his back pocket and it cracked in half. He and Tony had laughed themselves to tears when it happened.

Steve wasn’t laughing now.

He’s thrown back into the moment as Peter groans again, another intense chill running through the kid’s frame. Poor kid must be freezing, Steve thinks.

Freezing.

With that realization, Steve is taken back to his teen years. The years he spent consistently sick and feverish like Peter is now. The years his Ma used to keep him in bed for days, wrapped in every blanket they had in their house.

Blankets!

Steve suddenly remembers how to treat a high fever. You sweat it out, duh. With a tiny smile at the memory of his Ma, he stands from the couch carefully and heads to Tony’s linen closet. He spots a soft looking quilt beside a thick fluffy throw and grabs the two, knowing that when paired with the blanket the kid was already wrapped in they would make the perfect fever banishing covers.

Peter is almost back to sleep when Steve returns, but he hears the man's footsteps and his eyes open again. Steve makes quick work of unfolding the blankets and laying them over Peter. The kid hums, content with the warmth of the added blanked combating his chills, and falls swiftly to sleep. It makes Steve smile, pleased with his ability to care for the sick spidering.

Steve was feeling pretty confident that Tony was going to be just as pleased.

______

Tony Stark was far from pleased.

He had excused himself from his meeting after an hour, intent on checking Peter’s vitals on his phone through the watch the boy wore on his wrist.

What he saw was less than ideal. In fact, it was terrifying. 104.3 should be Peter’s physics grade after perfectly completing extra credit for fun, not his kid’s body temperature. The mechanic bolts to the nearest elevator, paying no mind to the white-collar assholes who awaited his return. They didn’t matter, not when his kid’s brain was melting thirty floors up.

“Steve!” He shouts when the elevator doors finally open to the penthouse. The blonde jumps when he hears his name and his eyes widen as he sees his panicked boyfriend sprinting towards him.

“Tony wha-?”

“Where’s Peter, Steve? Where is he— is he okay?”

Still a bit flustered, Steve just points to the sleeping boy on the couch, still wrapped in the thick blankets. When Tony sees him, his eyes only go wider.

“What, are you trying to fucking roast him?” Tony asks, exasperated. Before Steve can answer, Tony begins removing the blankets from his kid. Cringing at the heat that wafts out from them as they go.

“I-I- his fever got higher! I was trying to help him sweat it out!” Steve stumbles through his explanation.

“Sweat it out? Jesus fuck what are you from the thir- oh my god you’re from the thirties.” Tony halts with the realization. Steve Rogers was borderline a complete stranger to modern medicine and comes from an era of absolute batshit home remedies. The man smoked cigarettes for his asthma for fucks sake.

“Okay, alrighty then. Steve do me a favor and go start a lukewarm bath for me please.” Tony orders in about the most anxiously calm voice Steve had ever heard.

“Okay but Tony-“

“Now please, Steven.” Tony demands once more. Steve gets the memo, fast, and quickly heads to Tony’s bathroom.

Shit.

_____

After a quick dip in the tub and a quick anxiety attack from Tony, Peter’s temperature is back down to a less dangerous level. He’s sat back on the couch in the lightest t-shirt and boxers he owns, sipping ice water through a straw with a fever patch stuck to his forehead. Maybe it was overkill, but you couldn’t tell Tony that.

When the boy's eyes begin to droop Tony takes the water from his hands and helps him lay back down.

“Comfy, bubba?” He asked in a hushed tone. Peter just nods and yawns as he closes his eyes and quickly drifts back to sleep. “Get some more sleep bud.” He hums softly, laying a thin—thin—blanket over his kid.

Steve watches the pair from afar, afraid to step in or offer any more “help”. He doubts Tony will even want to look at him after what he’s done. Which is why when Tony stands and turns to him, he immediately tenses. He’s ready to be yelled at, cursed at, probably dumped.

“C’mere.” Tony says, opening his arms to Steve, inviting him into a hug. The blonde is shocked, sure, but he accepts the hug quickly, silently thinking it could be his last with the man he’s come to love so much.

“Again, Stevie, I can hear you overthinking.” Tony mumbles against his boyfriend's shoulder. He pulls away from the hug and takes the man's hands, looking up at him. “All things considered, you did nothing wrong, hon.”

“Tony I just-“

“You just did what you thought was right. You didn’t know any better Steve.” Tony rebuts before Steve can even finish.

“I’m just…I’m really sorry Tony. You trusted me with your most important person and— I fucked up bad.” Steve apologizes.

“Woah there big guy!” Tony’s brows shoot up at the apology. “First off, language mister.” Tony teases, it makes Steve blush and a hint of a smile ghosts his lips. Tony sees that as a win. “Second, yes, you’re correct. Peter is incredibly important to me. He’s my kid, but you are my Steve!” Tony emphasizes, shaking Steve’s shoulders a bit as if it will help get the point across. “You are incredibly important to me too! You made a mistake, and guess what Steve, that’s human— you’re human!”

Steve smiles sadly and nods before looking back at Peter’s sleeping form on the couch, just double-checking that the kid was truly fine.

Tony huffs lightly, using his fingers to softly move Steve’s head so he’s looking at him again. “Look at me, love. Peter’s fine, you’re fine, I’m fine, and we are fine. Okay?”

Steve takes a deep breath, closing his eyes with a smile. “Okay.” He confirms quietly. He can feel Tony’s hands move to cup the sides of his cheeks as he’s brought into a deep kiss. It quells all of his anxieties. Tony is here, with him, and he’s not going anywher-

“Eeugh, y-you guys ‘re cute and stuff, but the PDA ’s kinda makin’ me nauseous.” Peter’s voice breaks their kiss. Both Avengers turn to the kid, their faces about as red as his feverish cheeks after getting caught.

Tony snorts. “Oh come on kiddie!” Tony pulls Steve’s face closer to his again, this time just peppering kisses across his face. “A man can’t show his boyfriend some love?”

The older men laugh until they hear a legitimate gag from Peter. “N-no I’m serious Mr. Stark—“ Gag. “I’m really nauseous.”

“Steven grab a trash can.” Tony prompts, the same anxiously calm demeanor back in his voice as before.

Steve wastes no time, sprinting to the closest receptacle. “On it!”

My Sister’s Fake Boyfriend–Peter Kavinsky

Dedicated to @hopeisoverrated​ for sending in the request!

What's worse than watching your sister date a cute guy? How about the fact that the guy she is dating just happens to be the only boy you've ever fallen for. Oh, and it's all fake.

When Lara Jean told me that she was dating Peter Kavinsky to fool everybody, I have never felt sicker. At that moment, I didn't recognize my sister.

                           ~•~

"What do you mean you don't really have feelings for Peter?"

"It's not that hard to understand, Y/N. Josh came around the corner with my letter in hand. I panicked and kissed Peter to avoid talking to Josh. Then, Peter and I got to talking. I want to keep Josh off my back and he wants to keep Gen off his. So, we came up with a plan, one that helped both of us."

"Don't you feel weird about fake dating someone?" I stuttered, nervously tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

"Not really," she shrugged not looking up from her phone. I just hummed as I stood up and started walking out of her room. "Y/N," she stopped me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I stuttered. I quickly left her room before she could see the tears building up in my eyes.

                           ~•~

To give her the benefit of the doubt, Lara Jean didn't know about my crush on Peter. No one did. I suffered in silence.

I waited by the front door for Lara Jean to come down so we could head to school. When she was finally ready, we started to leave.

"Wait," I said, stopping her. "You didn't grab your keys."

"Because I'm not driving." She said, opening the door.

"You really have to get passed this whole too-scare-to-drive-thing. It's sad," I sighed as I followed her.

I froze on the front porch when I saw Peter getting out of his Jeep.

"You guys coming?"

I looked over at Lara Jean to see her shrugging. "What? He offered to take us to school. It's part of the whole couple thing."

She started walking towards Peter, but I didn't move. "Y/N," she sighed when she noticed I wasn't following her. "Come on."

"Actually," I stuttered. "I'll just ride my bike to school."

"What are you talking about?" Peter laughed. "Y/N, the school is like 15 miles from here. Just hop in."

I hesitated, really not wanting to be stuck in a car with my sister and my crush. I sighed, knowing I didn't have much of a choice.

The whole ride to school, I sat in the back and didn't tare my eyes away from the window. I took a sip of my Korean yogurt but froze when I saw Peter watching me in the rearview mirror.

"What?" I asked softly.

"What are you drinking?" He asked.

Lara Jean looked over her shoulder at me and sighed. "It's a Korean yogurt drink Y/N is obsessed with. She drinks one every morning instead of eating breakfast," she said before I could.

"Can I try it?" Peter's question caught me off-guard. I didn't realize I hadn't answered until Lara Jean sighed, turning back towards me.

"Y/N, just give him some," she whispered. I cleared my throat as I handed it to him.

I held my breath, laughing slightly when he looked surprised. "Wow," he chuckled. "That's really good."

My breath got caught in my throat when he turned around to face me as he pulled up to a stoplight.

"What will it take for you to bring me one of these tomorrow?" He asked.

"Tomorrow?" I stuttered.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "Didn't Lara Jean tell you? I'm gonna start taking you guys to school from now on."

I really needed to find a different ride to school.

                       * * * * *

It's been three weeks since Lara Jean and Peter started dating. Fake dating.

Since they started, they hang out a lot more. Which means, I hang out with them. For some reason, they don't like being alone so I'm always their buffer.

It was miserable.

Not because I was their third wheel, but because Peter made me feel like I wasn't. He constantly talked to me, laughed at my stories, and actually paid attention to me. Which was strange since I was usually known as the quieter Covey daughter.

Margot was the smart one, Lara Jean was the creative one and Kitty was the energetic one. I have always been the shy one.

The more time I've spent with Peter, the more I've started to fall for him. And I hated it. It got to the point where my heart ached just looking at him.

I walked in the door after a long dance rehearsal. I readjusted my dance bag over my shoulder as I headed into the kitchen, desperately needing to fill my empty water bottle.

"Hey, you."

I jumped at the sudden male voice. I turned around to see Peter smirking at me.

"Peter," I gasped out. "You. . . You scared me."

"Sorry," he laughed slightly. We stared at each other, not saying anything. I cleared my throat and opened the fridge. I winced when I tried to pick up our Brita filter.

"You okay?"

I gasped as Peter walked up behind me, slowly closing the fridge and turning me around.

"I'm fine," I said under my breath as I walked by him.

"Y/N," he stopped me. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

I blushed at the worry in his eyes. "It's nothing. . . I just. . . I had to get a new partner because Jeremy moved and my new one can't quite do the lift yet. He sort of. . . dropped me and I landed on my shoulder."

"Wait, he dropped you?" Peter said, stepping closer to me. "Who is he?"

"Landon," I said softly.

"Landon Oaks?" He asked through his gritted teeth. I nodded, slightly biting my lip.

"Hey, Y/N? How was dance?" Lara Jean walked in and grabbed a snack from the cupboard.

Before I could say anything, Peter spoke up. "Her dipshit partner dropped her and she landed on her shoulder."

She looked up at me with wide eyes. "Please tell me it wasn't your bad shoulder," she said nervously.

"Bad shoulder?" Peter asked, looking between the two of us.

"Y/N dislocated her shoulder at a competition last year. She didn't say anything and kept dancing. Dad realized it after during the award ceremony when she wouldn't move her arm. We rushed her to the hospital. She ended up needing surgery."

She walked over and started looking at my shoulder. "Where does it hurt?" She asked quickly. "There is a big bruise. We should tell dad and maybe. . ."

"I'm fine," I cut her off. "It's not. . . It doesn't even hurt that bad."

"Are you sure?" Peter asked gently. I looked between my sister and her fake boyfriend.

"I'm fine," I said as I started to head upstairs. I turned around in the doorway and added, "Please don't tell dad."

"Fine," Lara Jean sighed. "Just make sure you ice it now and put a heating pad on it when you go to sleep."

I nodded, trying to ignore the look on Peter's face.

                       * * * * *

I was sitting alone at lunch when I suddenly noticed a shadow. I looked up to see Peter smiling at me, sitting across from me.

"What are you. . ." I stuttered.

"Lara Jean had to meet with her teacher. Something about her English paper," he shrugged. I nodded, remembering her mentioning she needed extra help on her paper.

I went back to watching the video on my phone, sighing when I instantly saw what my coach was talking about. I was stiff.

"What are you watching?" Peter asked, taking a bite of his apple.

"Oh," I cleared my throat. "One of our numbers for competition has a duet between Landon and I. The one where. . . The one where he dropped me. Anyway, my coach filmed Landon and me yesterday so we could watch it and see what we were doing wrong."

I gasped, biting my lip as Peter took my phone out of my hand. I held my breath as he watched the video, a smile never leaving his lips.

"I forgot how beautiful of a dancer you are," he mumbled. I looked away, trying to hide my blush. I nervously tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.

"Him? Not so much," he added, chuckling softly.

"It's not his fault," I sighed, taking my phone back. "We weren't always partners. But my last one moved and his last partner quit. We kind of just got thrown together. We're still getting used to dancing with each other."

"Anything I can do to help?"

I looked up, my eyes wide. "No," I stuttered.

"You sure? I could help you get passed the awkwardness."

"How?" I asked, both wanting and not wanting to take him up on his offer.

"Well, maybe dancing with me will help you feel more confident about the routine. Then you can go and dance with him, feeling fine."

"I don't know, Peter," I stuttered. "It's not that I'm not comfortable with the routine, I just. . . I'm not used to dancing with anyone other than Jeremy."

"Exactly," Peter said, sounding a little excited. "You can practice getting used to dancing with someone else by dancing with me. I don't mind."

I opened and closed my mouth, not seeing a way out of this. "It's settled then," Peter nodded when I didn't say no. "I'll come by after school and you can teach me your routine."

                       * * * * *

At first, dancing with Peter was a disaster. I kept stumbling and couldn't teach him correctly. Finally, he pulled away and laughed.

"Y/N, breathe." He chuckled, rubbing my arms. "It's just me. Besides, this is what you're good at. Own it."

After that, I was able to somewhat calm down and teach him the routine. We ran it one more time, perfectly. As the song ended, Peter held me in our final position while we caught our breaths.

My eyes widened when I realized how close we were. Peter briefly looked down at my lips before looking back up at my eyes.

We jumped apart when we heard applauding. We let go of each other and turned around to see my dad and sisters watching us.

"That looked great, kiddo." My dad smiled as he walked over and gave me a high five. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, looking at Lara Jean.

"Since you were able to do it with Mr. Two Left Feet, you shouldn't have a problem doing it with Landon now." She smiled at me, causing me to nod.

"Wanna run it one more time?" Peter offered.

"No," I said a little too quickly. I opened and closed my mouth as they all stared at me. "I think. . . I'm gonna go ice my shoulder."

Without another word, I quickly walked inside.

"What was that about?" I heard Lara Jean wonder aloud.

"I don't know," Peter sighed.

                       * * * * *

After Peter's and my dancing, I've ignored him. I started getting a ride with our neighbor. I've been eating lunch in the library to avoid sitting across from him and my sister. I was the one who said Landon and I should get some extra rehearsal after practice every day. And when I did finally come home, I went straight to my room before Peter could stop me as he studied with Lara Jean at the kitchen table.

I walked in the door after the longest dress rehearsal of my life. The competition was this weekend and my coach was working our asses off. I walked into the bathroom, sighing as I took the tight updo out of my hair. I ran my fingers through my hair, my scalp instantly ached as my hair fell around my shoulders.

"Okay, what's going on with you?"

I jumped when Lara Jean appeared in the doorway. "What do you mean?" I stuttered.

She looked at me, seeing right through my question. "Come on, Y/N. You've been acting really weird lately. And it's not your normal pre-competition nerves. You've been avoiding me for weeks now. Did I do something?"

"No," I answered quickly. "You didn't do anything. I'm just. . . The competition is tomorrow. You know how I get. Plus with the whole "Jeremy leaving and Landon and I not clicking" thing. . . I've been stressed."

"And the whole "you and Peter" thing," she added.

"What?" I stuttered.

"Really, Y/N?" She sighed. "You're my sister. I'd have to be the worse sister in the world not to notice how jumpy and stuttery you get around him."

"It's nothing," I said quickly as I tried to leave the bathroom. She stepped in front of me, blocking me.

"Y/N, do you like Peter?"

"I said it's nothing," I said angrily as I brushed past her. Before she could say anything, I walked into my room and slammed the door shut.

                       * * * * *

I didn't go down when dad said dinner was ready. I stayed in my room instead. Usually this would concern a father, but my dad knew how focused I got the night before a competition. I usually spent the whole night in my room, getting ready for it. Packing my bag, setting up all my make up, steaming my costume and getting to bed early.

Lara Jean, on the other hand, knew I wasn't shut out in my room because of my competition.

I could faintly hear my dad downstairs doing the dishes as Kitty talked about school. Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

"Is that Peter?" My dad asked.

"Yeah," Lara Jean said, her voice sounding weird even from up in my room.

I held my breath as I heard the door open and Peter exchange pleasantries with my dad. I turned up my playlist of the songs my team and I were dancing to at the competition tomorrow, as I heard Peter and Lara Jean walking upstairs.

A few hours later, I took the risk of heading downstairs to the kitchen. I knew that Kitty would be taking her bath and dad would be in his room, binge-watching some medical show.

With my headphones in and my competition playlist playing, I snuck downstairs. I quietly and slowly started warming up the soup that my family had had for dinner.

As I waited for my food to warm up, I started doing my choreography around the kitchen, unaware that I was being watched. I was in the middle of the song where Landon and I break off and dance our duet. I closed my eyes and started doing the routine that Landon and I do, the one I taught Peter.

I turned around, gasping when someone stepped into my arms. I opened my eyes, instantly stepping back when I saw Peter smiling at me. I pulled my headphones out, taking another step back.

"Peter," I stuttered. "What are you. . . I thought you were with. . ."

"I was," he said as he reached up and scratched the back of his neck. I watched his nervous gesture as the microwave beeped.

"Lara Jean and I have been talking," he said slowly. I waited for him to finish his thought but he didn't.

"About what?" I finally asked.

"We decided that being in a fake relationship was just causing more pain than good."

"Pain?" I asked under my breath.

"Yeah," he chuckled, taking a step towards me. "But not who you are thinking is in pain."

I was about to take a step back when Peter reached forward and grabbed my hands, intertwining our fingers as he looked down.

"Lara Jean and I being together has been causing you pain." He looked up at me, studying my eyes, waiting for me to say something.

"No," I stuttered. "Why would you. . . Why would you think that?"

He sighed, sending me a knowing look. "Y/N," he whispered. "I know."

"You know what?" I asked, slowly.

"Lara Jean told me everything."

"What?" I stuttered, pulling my hands away from his. I turned around and walked across the kitchen to the microwave as I continued to ramble. "What are you talking about? Lara Jean is just. . . I mean. . . I never said. . ."

I gasped as Peter ran up, turned me around and instantly pressed his lips to mine. It took me a second before the shock wore off. As soon as it did, Peter pulled away. My lips were still pursed as he smiled, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N," he whispered, his hand still cupping my cheek. "If I had known sooner, I never would've. . . I never would've gotten into a fake relationship with your sister." He laughed as he annunciated sister. "Wow," he sighed. "I'm a major dick."

"No, you aren't," I said before I could stop myself. I bit my bottom lip, my cheeks burning from the way he was looking at me.

"So," he hesitated. "You don't hate me?"

"Of course not," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I don't hate you, Peter. I have. . . I've. . ."

Peter smirked as I continued to stutter. He reached up and cupped both of my cheeks in his hands. He waited a beat before leaning down and pressing his lips to mine. This time I didn't hesitate to kiss him back.

As our lips moved in sync, Peter let go of my face and wrapped his arms around my waist. I slid my hands up his chest, wrapping my arms around his neck.

He pulled away and leaned his forehead against mine as we caught our breaths.

"Y/N?" He whispered, his breath hitting my face. "Will you go on a date with me?"

I leaned back, nervously chewing on my bottom lip.

"I can't," I said, making his face drop. I smirked before adding, "I have a dance competition all day tomorrow."

He sent me a look before laughing as he pulled me closer to his chest.

"You Covey girls and your cruel sense of humor. I will never understand it."

This Mango story is so good. I was thinking maybe something with Hopper and Mango, maybe the first time she calls him grandpa or whatever name she's gonna call him

Masterlist

Part 20

-

(!!!!!!!!!!!!)

-

Mina was leaning against Billy as he read Go, Dog. Go! to her.

There were flying back to Hawkins for the Tommy and Carol’s wedding. Mina had never been on a plane, so Steve packed a bag full of books, and toys, and snacks.

They had worked on her alphabet for a while, played with a big animal puzzle she loved.

She was currently smooshed against Billy, had been handing him books as she held her giraffe close to her chest.

Steve was having a miserable flight. He was four and a half months pregnant and was sick, all the time. His pregnancy with Mina had been a breeze, this one was, less so.

The doctor had said everything was normal, that sometimes, you just got sicker.

He lumbered back from throwing up uncomfortably in the airplane bathroom.

This pregnancy had also brought more of a weight gain. His tits already felt huge.

“You okay, Baby?” Steve just nodded, his eyes closed. Billy reached over to rub at his little bump. “Sweet Pea kickin’ up a fuss?” At the six week appointment, Billy had been told the pup was the size of a sweet pea. Had stood up and fucking yelled that’s what we’re callin’ it!

So Sweet Pea had stuck.

“Pea hates me, I think. Wants me to suffer.” Mina leaned over, put her head on Steve’s tummy. She insisted she could hear the pup, that they could talk to one another.

“Sweet Pea says sorry.” Steve smiled down at her.

“Tell Sweet Pea it’s okay, I know they don’t mean it.” Mina nodded, turned to whisper Dada says it’s okay into his sweater.

Steve made eye contact with Billy as they both melted.

-

The first leg of the flight had been just under four hours before a one hour layover in Chicago. It was about an hour and a half to Indianapolis, where Hopper would be meeting them to drive the two hours back to Hawkins.

Mina had fallen asleep during the last flight, stayed asleep all the way back to Hawkins.

Hop brought them to the bed and breakfast downtown. He picked up Mina as Billy went to check in.

She shifted groggily, opening her eyes just a little.

Billy had Steve had lots of pictures of the Hawkins gang around the apartment. She knew everyone’s faces. She blinked up at him before her eyes side closed.

“Hi, Granpopper.” Hop looked like he was gonna cry. Steve did cry, just a little.

They got set up in their room, bidding Hop a goodnight.

“No, Bill, it was the cutest shit I’ve ever seen. She just like, took him in for a moment, and then kinda went back to sleep, and called him Granpopper.” Steve was whispering to Billy, Mina sleeping in the twin-sized bed in the corner of the room.

“I think it’s because we always say Grandpa Hopper, and she got confused. But I’ll give it to you, that sounds really fucking adorable.”

“It may have been the best thing she’s ever done.” Steve had said that a few times a week since she was born.

-

The next day was the rehearsal dinner.

The three of them spent the day in town, showing their old apartment to Mina, pointing to the window that used to be her bedroom.

Dustin had come and picked them up in the old beater his mom had gotten him when he turned seventeen last month. Steve nearly started crying again as he hugged Dustin, who was just about as tall as Steve now.

Dustin drove them out to Lovers Lake, promised to return in two hours to pick them up.

They spent the day having a picnic on the grass, Mina chased bees around and picked flowers, kept giving them to Steve to give to Sweet Pea. She sat down and let Steve braid some into her hair.

They joined Tommy and Carol and their families for dinner, everyone cooing over Mina, how big she had grown. She sat on Tommy’s mother’s lap for a while as she sang Spanish nursery rhymes with her, slowly teaching her the words to Los Pollitos. She had taken to calling the little girl Mina Beatriz with her thick accent.

The wedding was held the next day.

The ceremony was short. Steve was technically Tommy’s best man, but he had straight up refused to stand up there, with how much his body hurt, sitting in a chair was bad enough.

He gave a toast at the reception, had told the story of the first time Tommy and Carol had kissed when they were seven, how nervous Tommy had been for their first official date at fifteen, how he had spent hours making Steve held him do his hair, pick out the right outfit. He ended up getting a little teary when he got serious, wishing them all the best for their marriage said he was proud to be a part of their story, their family.

They could only dance for so long. Steve’s body was not his friend anymore, and Mina was up well past her bedtime, was conked out in her seat as Tommy’s parents drove them to the bnb.

-

The next morning, they were meeting at Joyce and Hop’s place for a big family reunion.

Mina was hoping like a bunny as she held Billy’s hand.

Lucas had picked them up on his way to the Byers-Hopper place, had made Steve get all misty again as he thought of how old all his pups were.

They opened the front door, everyone greeting them loudly and then-

“Granpopper!” Mina went running for Hop. Steve grabbed Billy’s arm.

“We think she’s trying to say Grandpa Hopper, but like, granpopper is so cute we are never gonna correct her.” Hop just laughed. She was telling everyone that would listen about Sweet Pea, which was pretty much the whole group.

Billy just settled Steve on the couch and went to offer his help to Joyce and Claudia in the kitchen.

“Look at you. You’re so tan.” Dustin was sitting next to Steve.

“It’s because I’ve been going on long walks so I don’t get varicose veins.” Dustin just made a face.

“Thank you, for now making this conversation weird.”

“Hey, you asked.”

“I so didn’t.” Mina came hoping over to them, climbed between Steve and Dustin.

“Dusty!” She gave him a hug. “Uncle Dusty!”

“Hello to you too, Mina Bea. How are you this fine evening?” She just giggled. “You a such a lady. How old are you?” She held up two fingers.

“But I’m gonna be three!”

“Mango, how long till your birthday?” They had been working on counting while they went over the days of the week and months of the year with her. “It’s April 3rd, and your birthday is June 6th.” She started singing the months of the year, smiling over at Steve.

“Two months!” Dustin gave her a high five.

“I think you’re kid is smarter than you.” Dustin grinned, elbowing Steve.

“Oh, I know she’s smarter than me. She’s got my hair, but she’s got Billy’s brains.”

“Pretty Boy, I can hear you talkin’ bad about yourself in there!” Steve didn’t even know where Billy was, just heard his voice.

“Okay, he must have like, a sixth sense for that.” Steve just laughed.

Come and Lay the Roses- Prologue- [Ivar x OC]

Summary: Little girls grow up believing they’ll meet their Prince Charming, fall in love, and get married. Aaline was never naive enough to dream like that. She as least thought she would have a choice in who she married. Her father ended up taking that away from her too.

Characters: Ivar x OC, Bjorn x Torvi, Ubbe x Margrethe, Hvitserk x Thora, Sigurd x OC, Ragnar, Lagertha

Warnings: Arranged marriage, language, violence, sex, and torture.  

Word Count: 1895

“It’s not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Ragnar stared deep into the flames fluttering in the fireplace in his office. A glass of scotch hung, untouched, from his fingers. His eyes were unfocused, deep in thought. He shifted when he heard the door open and the clatter of his sons enter the room. He turned in his chair to face them.

His sons, his beautiful sons, the lights of his life. Björn was his oldest. A man grown with children of his own. Björn was his firstborn son with his first wife Lagertha, a formidable woman that commanded respect and still served as his right-hand advisor.

Together they had two children, Björn, and Gyda, his only daughter. How he loved his daughter. Her light had brought him such happiness and when it was extinguished, he lost something forever. He could still see her hair in the summer wheat of Norway and her eyes in the color of the sea in the winter time. They say that man must love his sons more, but a man can be jealous of his sons, and his daughter can always be the light of his life.

He had twelve years with her and it wasn’t enough. At twelve years old, Gyda started to get sick. She couldn’t sleep at night and she had chills. She often told him and Lagertha that she was tired and then Lagertha told him Gyda was losing weight. It was when she started to get nose bleeds and Björn noticed red spots on her skin that Lagertha took her to the doctors.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia, ALL. Her doctor advised them to begin chemotherapy treatments. He also encouraged them to have Björn tested as siblings had an increased risk of getting ALL. Björn tested negative and the doctors gave them an optimistic outcome.

Something happened though. Gyda got worse, not better. They all tested to see if they were a bone marrow match but none of them were, not even Björn. Gyda was getting sicker and nothing was working. Ragnar was losing hope that his daughter would survive this terrible illness but then one day she appeared to be better. She was cheerier then she had been in months. She was eating again and she was laughing with Björn like she hadn’t been stuck in a hospital for weeks, being poked and prodded every day. She was her old self again.

Lagertha always spent the night with Gyda and she said it was around two in the morning when Gyda flatlined. She called him as soon as the doctors started performing chest compressions and Ragnar was quick to wake Floki and have him stay with Björn. It was too late by the time Ragnar got to the hospital.

Lagertha was sitting outside, clutching her hands to her chest. She told him between sobs that doctors worked on Gyda for nearly twenty minutes but they could never get a heartbeat.   

No amount of time with his children would ever be enough. It was worse than death, outliving your children.

He and Lagertha tried for several months to get back to each other. Gyda’s death tore at them both but there was still love between them. Their love and Björn. Gyda’s death left a hole in their family and in their hearts. One they all tried to fill.

Björn began learning how to kickbox. It became his great passion, something that allowed him to vent his frustrations.

Lagertha began volunteering. She went to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, finding Gyda’s face in every person she helped.                    

Ragnar found Aslaug. She was the daughter of a long-dead war hero. Her father Sigurd had died in the Bay of Pigs invasion when she was young and she quickly found a home with her uncle. Her uncle was an Earl of The Northmen, the organization that controlled a large portion of the shipping in the state. When they met, Ragnar was Earl of Kattegat, a chapter of The Northmen, visiting Götaland to form an alliance with the Earl there Jarl Borg.

Aslaug lived in the area with her uncle and she enchanted Ragnar as soon as he saw her. She was as clever as she was beautiful and Ragnar found a freshness in her that he hadn’t seen since before Gyda died. It was easy for him to fall under Aslaug’s sway. She was easy to love.

They spent a few nights together in Götaland and Ragnar thought it would be easy to forget about their time together. Lagertha welcomed him home with open arms and Björn was smiling more. They were learning to live again.

Seven months passed without a word from Aslaug. The alliance between Jarl Borg was shaky but Ragnar was hopeful. When a small caravan arrived one-morning carrying Aslaug and her retinue, Ragnar was apprehensive. He welcomed her with open arms but froze at the sight of her swollen belly.

Aslaug was pleasant to Lagertha and Björn, never showing an ounce of dislike or hatred. Lagertha looked at her with suspicious eyes and bit her tongue as she watched Ragnar and Aslaug together. It wasn’t until they were in the comfort of their own room that she accused him. “Did you have sex with her?”

Ragnar couldn’t avoid the question so he didn’t. “Yes.” She threw a pillow at him. He dodged it easily. “How many times?” She asked. Her voice was thick with anger and tears. They had been married for nearly twenty years. He knew his wife well. “I don’t remember.” He said. She screamed a high, broken, roar that he felt in his bones.

She took her things to the guest room and stayed there for the night. Later they discussed the implications of Aslaug’s pregnancy. “If it’s yours, I’m leaving you.” She whispered across the narrow space between them. Ragnar looked up and watched many emotions cross her face. Fear, anger, sadness, vulnerability, but the one that broke his heart was the pain he saw there. He had not seen that look since their daughter died and he was the one who put it there now. He hung his head and only cried when she left the room.

Aslaug gave birth to a healthy baby boy and a DNA test was ordered immediately. Three days later, Lagertha left him. Björn chose to go with his mother and Ragnar was left with a new son, an old lover, and divorce papers.

He grew to love Aslaug. She bore him four beautiful sons that made him into the father he is now.

Ubbe was first. He had such passion for life and adventure. His passion extended into all cultures and ideas. He was the only one of his sons to study abroad in school and he traveled the world. He explored different countries and studied different religions all for the sake of learning and knowledge.

Hvitserk was his third son and the second with Aslaug. Ragnar often thought that Hvitserk was lost in the world. Never really finding his place amongst his brothers. He was closest with Ivar and Ubbe but enjoyed quality time with all his brothers.

Sigurd was his third son with Aslaug and fourth overall. Sigurd kept himself apart from his brother’s. He resented his younger brother, Ivar because of his disability. Aslaug spent an inordinate amount of time with Ivar, fearing for his health and safety and, as a result, neglecting her other children.

It wasn’t Sigurd’s fault any more than it was Ivar’s. Aslaug was not a perfect mother but she did her best. Ragnar couldn’t say much either. He was emotionally absent through most is his sons’ childhood and left Aslaug to attend to the boys. He spent nearly two decades traveling for The Northmen and left Aslaug at home with the boys for most of those years.

Ivar was the last son gifted to Ragnar and he was the most difficult. Ivar the Boneless, he was called. Ragnar gifted him with the moniker after doctors told them he had DDH, Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip. Through most of his childhood, Aslaug insisted he not walk for fear of hurting himself.

Throughout his early years he would haul himself around on his hands, building impeccable upper body strength at an early age. After doctor’s assured Ragnar and Aslaug that Ivar could walk, Ragnar took him to physical therapy.

When he was a teenager, he started complaining of pains in his hips and Aslaug took him back to the doctor claiming his DDH came back. As it turned out he just had Inflammatory Arthritis of the Hip. Aslaug nearly insisted that Ivar remain bed ridden but Ragnar took a rare step in his son’s care and overruled her. Daily doses of regulated painkillers and physical therapy kept the worst pain at bay.

Although Ivar maintained a noticeable limp into his adulthood, he turned into a frightening young man.

And he was frightening in every sense of the word. It wasn’t just his ability to walk that grew with him. His aggression and savagery grew as well. He was close to Ragnar’s best friend Floki and Floki’s hatred for the Saxon organization was quickly transferred to Ivar. Ivar made it a point to rid the world of the Saxon organization as if it was his personal mission. Ivar’s cruelty extended beyond just Saxon’s. He was cruel to those he claimed to love, using his brother’s humanity against them at every turn.

Ragnar loved his youngest son and he knew that his behavior was a result of Aslaug’s coddling and Ivar’s own insecurities. When Ivar was a boy, Ragnar told him that everyone would always underestimate him. Not only that, but people ridiculed Ivar for his disability. Less so now than when he was younger but scars of childhood never truly left him. He carried those words with him. Cripple, lame, disabled, lesser, inferior. He wore them as a shield.

Ivar’s cruelty was a defense he used to keep people from hurting him and it worked, but it also kept people from loving him. Ragnar hoped to change that.

Nearly twenty years after she bore him his last son, Aslaug was taken from them. The coroner said it was an accident, these things happen, but Ragnar didn’t believe him. A bullet to her heart with her back turned was not an accident.

Ragnar and his brother Rollo spent the better part of a year tracking down the individual responsible. In the end, it turned out to be a rogue soldier for the Saxon army. A warrior who wanted to prove himself to his kings. Ecbert and Aelle didn’t claim him and assured Ragnar that he could do what he wanted with no retribution from either one of them.

Ragnar did but the relationship between the Northmen and the Saxon organizations had never been the same. Neither had Ragnar’s sons.

He gazed at them now. Björn, standing proud and tall in front of his father. Ubbe standing beside him. Hvitserk and Sigurd quickly helped themselves to Ragnar’s liquor shelf. Ivar was the only one missing.

Ivar was the purpose of this meeting. Ragnar had recently made a deal with a powerful man and Ivar was the lynchpin.

He stood from his desk and faced his four oldest sons. “Shall we begin then.”

It’s 3pm on a Sunday. I am on an Amtrak train back to NY from a weekend in Virginia. It’s been a long weekend that has simultaneously felt extremely short, and I don’t feel ready to go back. I miss everyone already, my heart is heavy and I have still yet to get over this discomfort with goodbyes.

In between the last time I wrote and now, I had a birthday. I turned 24 on a day that began bitterly cold in Brooklyn and ended up being somewhat temperate by the time I walked home from the train at 10pm. I had friends out for sushi that evening, I called my sister, I called my uncle, I called my mom and dad. A few nights later more friends took me out drinking at Duff’s in Williamsburg. I was plied with good food all week and was reminded of how loved I am, and part of that was a mini-vacation the following weekend (ending today) to hang out with my sister Caroline, her husband Ryan, my sister Sarah and her two boys, at Caroline and Ryan’s house in Richmond.

Thursday was a dreary and kind of woozy day, the train ride down took forever (or felt like it did) and I finally landed at my sister Caroline’s around 10pm. She made me soup, and we sat around her dining room table, small but fitting for just the three of us. The soup was thick with celery and herbs and felt like the most nourishing thing I’d had in weeks, and I slept well that night.

I came to Virginia kind of sick and got sicker on Friday. The weather was rainy Friday and Sunday, but very nice on Saturday. Friday I was meant to get a tattoo from Katie Davis, a local artist who I’ve wanted to have a piece done by for years. My first tattoo was done by her husband, Fred Pinckard, at Salvation Tattoo in Richmond where they both work. I follow both of them on Instagram and realized I could take an extra day for this weekend trip and get a tattoo done by Katie. I was going to get a deer tattooed on the other side of my body from where Fred’s tattoo was done- hers would be on the outside of my left thigh. The deer was meant to be an homage to my time in the UK. Friday I spent most of the day throwing up, with some kind of stomach bug, so I had to cancel my appointment, which I made a month out. I felt awful about it.

My hope is to come back and get it done, but I think what I’m so disappointed about is that I don’t know for sure when I’ll be back. Train tickets are expensive, my budget is tight enough as it is, and I can’t really justify taking time and money to go do it. If circumstances were different I’d probably stay another night or so in RVA and get the tattoo done, but I’m still in such a transitional period (read: broke) that a $70 train ticket isn’t something I can shrug off. Maybe in a few months I’ll feel differently, but missing out on this session (after I’d set aside time and money!) because I was sick was a huge bummer.

So was missing out on a lot of things I wanted to do in the UK because I was sick, frankly, and so is not feeling like I have the money or time to go to a doctor (if that would even help?) and figure out what I need to do to not get sick as often as I do. I don’t want it to become a trend, I don’t want to have a weak stomach- but how much money and time do people waste in denial about medical conditions? How much time and money to people waste, in general? Am I wasting time and money by staying in New York?

Unclear, not the point. Now that I’ve done enough complaining: 

The weekend was great as soon as my sister Sarah and my two nephews Nate and Eli, arrived at Caroline’s house. We sat around and played card games and I ate some rice and felt better, slowly. I woke up the next day feeling much better, though still tried to take it easy- maybe I’ve learned my lesson with overcompensating from a sick day. Sarah let me drive her Subaru to bowling, and I paid a cash toll for the first time, tossing the coins in a big silver basket coming out of the booth. The second time around I missed it (I’m publishing this on my blog, Jesus) and Sarah scrambled out of the car and picked up all of the coins I dropped for us to be able to get going. I ended up winning the second round of bowling, Ryan made us spectacular spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, we watched the 2018 Robin Hood movie and everyone just sat around, comfortably watching a movie, which I was taking part in for the first time in what felt like a long time. I am feeling tears prick at the backs of my eyes thinking about it.

And I got to go out and photograph under the Nickel Bridge in Richmond. I took Caroline’s car and drove less than two miles from their house to this park connected to a boarded-up pump house, and walked out on the towpath along the river for a while. It was cold enough to want for a jacket, but I didn’t need my coat. (I feel like I’ve been wearing a winter coat for eight goddamn years.) I leaned over a chain link fence and trespassed over CSX property and breathed in crisp pre-spring air and felt my feet sink deeper into the ground, and it felt freeing. Shooting 35mm and feeling free, in Virginia, is how I started taking the pictures I take now, and every time I do it I feel like I need to do it ten times over.

Caiti mentioned my feeling sad was about growing up, maybe growing away from my family more than I’m comfortable with. I said, if I’m growing up why do I still feel like a dumb kid? Does anybody ever really figure out how to balance this shit? I worry that my family feels that I’m aloof and inaccessible because I chose to live in New York. The truth is I don’t have the resources to put up more than one person, and my apartment is small enough that my family members (almost all of whom are older) would still feel cramped. I wanted to move away from the DC area, and wanted to avoid going to a community college, or taking a gap year, or embracing the unknown, when I moved to New York: I didn’t want to move away from my family, but that’s what I ended up doing, and now I have a life in New York and they have lives elsewhere.

And that’s okay! I’ve had important growth since then, and learned important lessons, and honestly having made a life for oneself (anywhere!) is a goddamn challenge, no matter who you are. I grant this. I trust myself, I trust my choices, but it’s hard when it feels like sometimes I’m turning my back on people who do things like scoop up coins from the road for me, or who get me a whole cake a week after my birthday so I still have candles to blow out, or who give me the last of their awesome homemade soup (even if I did reject it the following day), to pursue my own path and make my own choices and be my own person, somewhere that feels so far away.

--

Part of this is sadness that I’ve been denying my own narrative, under the pretenses of furthering others’. Right? It’s probably time I got serious about what I wanted, if I’m having the feeling that I don’t want what I have.

I had simple wants and needs when I started looking for a new job: I wanted free time without sacrificing decent pay, I wanted to be able to skip town every once in a while without getting into trouble or missing out on anything. (To be fair- two of my favorite standup comedians did shows in New York while I’ve been out of town.) I needed to take care of myself and not feel so irreparably sad all the time. I don’t think my wants or needs have changed much- just my ability to pay attention to them.

Our train is pulling through DC currently, in a minute I’ll look out the window and see Silver Spring. I went to Book Thug Nation in Williamsburg a couple of weeks back, spoke to the cashier at length about the store and the neighborhood since I’d never been before. It turns out he grew up maybe a mile away from where I did, in Silver Spring, home to many, beloved by few. We’ve now veered away and are plugging away through Hyattsville but I’m still stuck thinking about that conversation, where we talked about not feeling okay calling ourselves New Yorkers, even though that’s what all our family and friends from Maryland felt like we were. My parents often call me that, and I don’t mind, but it feels like a lie. We’re pulling through the suburbs just below Baltimore and the ground is already dusted with snow- it feels just shy of cruel- which is me being melodramatic. I just don’t want to claim this snow as mine.

I’m thinking about how terrified I was to move home and stop making work after college. The new work I’ve been doing, I decided recently (after a come-to-jesus with Julie over a mountain of nachos and some other very important dialogue), is about my impetus to keep making work after school. It’s about determination and willfulness and the urge to keep doing, to keep going. I’m doing it subconsciously but I’m doing it, mostly in places that aren’t where I live.

In some ways, I wonder if I’m honoring the places I’m from, the places I leave part of myself every time I leave, by bringing it back to New York and actually MAKING the work here. I don’t have an Imacon in Maryland or Virginia, it’s not like I would have guaranteed access to anything if I moved; I couldn’t even find somewhere that sold film south of New York, much less a place that develops it, without charging a huge markup. I made the choices I made not because they were wrong or right, but because they were my choices to make, and given the circumstances I was when I made them, I think I chose wisely. In this practice, though, I need the escape as much as I need to return to the fold. I was writing a few weeks ago about longing, and how longing leads to searching, and how, usually, if you search stringently enough, if you sift through enough dirt, you find something good. I’m still searching, and it’s a laborious process- but I have rewards. I have tangible evidence that I’ve made work and continued the patterns that are good for me (and dropped some that aren’t), which is what I wanted.

And I still want it- I think a casualty of that is feeling sad I can’t spend all my time in one place for too long without getting an itch to leave. I loved traveling. I will do more of it. I’ll also come back to the places I’m from more. I wanted to promise this with a tattoo, but I don’t need a tattoo to promise myself that. (Though I still want it, goddamn it.) I want it to be enough to promise myself something. While I was asleep an old friend texted me and asked what my goals were for this year: I think that’s a decent one.

@peskyshortcake @fire-night-sky

the Brainy and Alexis partners in crime AU playlist

Alone Together- Fall Out Boy

I don't know where you're going But do you got room for one more troubled soul? I don't know where I'm going But I don't think I'm coming home and I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead This is the road to ruin And we're starting at the end Say yeah (yeah!) Let's be alone together (yeah)

Dance, Dance- Fall Out Boy

She says she's no good with words but I'm worse Barely stuttered out a joke of a romantic stuck to my tongue Weighed down with words too over-dramatic Tonight it's "It can't get much worse" Vs. "No one should ever feel like..."

Dance, dance We're falling apart to half time Dance, dance And these are the lives you love to lead Dance, this is the way they'd love If they knew how misery loved me

Dangerous- Before You Exit

She's got a first time kiss that'll lock you in She's gonna break your heart but you can't resist I know that I just met her, I know I should know better Oooo she's so dangerous I thought she was just so innocent And from the start I was giving in She's such a wreck and I can't forget That ooo she's so dangerous

Dirty Work- Halestorm

Get on your knees and let the games begin Bow to your queen and I will crown your head 'Cause I can make you every inch a king Before I do tell me, tell me what's in it for me? I need someone young, willing and able You need someone old enough to know better

EVOL- Marina and the Diamonds

It only takes two lonely people To fuck love up and make it evil It only takes a drop of evil To fuck up two beautiful people L.O.V.E. L.O.V.E. L.O.V.E. E.V.O.L. L.O.V.E., do you love me? L.O.V.E., love is evil Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker Every kiss you give me makes me sicker A day in the dark, a day in a cloud of gloom, yeah

For Reasons Unknown- The Killers

With one deep breath, and one big step, I move a little bit closer. I move a little bit closer. For reasons unknown. I caught my stride. I flew and flied. I know if destiny’s kind, I’ve got the rest of my mind. But my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to. And my eyes, they don’t see you no more. And my lips, they don’t kiss, they don’t kiss the way they used to, and my eyes don’t recognize you no more. For reasons unknown; for reasons unknown.

Heroes- All Time Low

Yeah this is moving in the same direction But I'm a little too spent to care Cause it's a battlefield till it blows over Keep your friends close and your enemies closer We're throwing stones though we live in glass houses We talk shit like it's a cross to bear You're only relevant until you get older Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, enemies closer

I Don’t Love You- My Chemical Romance

Well, when you go So never think, I'll make you try to stay And maybe when you get back I'll be off to find another way When you go Would you even turn to say, "I don't love you Like I did Yesterday."

I Forgive You- Every Avenue

From you, I could throw my cares away now I know how freedom taste and I thank you for the pain cause now I can deal with anything You, you had a way of keeping me on my toes I forgive you for the truth I liked you better when you lied, and I forgive you being you cause you were better when you faked every smile

I Miss the Misery- Halestorm

I've been a mess since you stayed I've been a wreck since you changed Don't let me get in your way I miss the lies and the pain The fights that keep us awake-ake-ake I'm tellin you! I miss the bad things The way you hate me I miss the screaming The way that you blame me! Miss the phone calls When it's your fault I miss the late nights Don't miss you at all! I like the kick in the face And the things you do to me! I love the way that it hurts! I don't miss you, I miss the misery!

Just The Way I’m Not- All Time Low

I'm a waste of chances, Full of bad romances, Your favorite enemy, And your most hated friend. When it hurts it hurts, You wonder if it's worth it. But when it works it works, When it's broke it's perfect. Woah oh! Never seem to please you, no, Don't you ever let me go, I know your heart is shut, shut, shut. And don't you know, Nothing's gonna change us.

Kiss With a Fist- Florence + The Machine

My black eye casts no shadow Your red eye sees no blame Your slaps don't stick Your kicks don't hit So we remain the same Blood sticks, sweat drips Break the lock if it don't fit A kick in the teeth is good for some A kiss with a fist is better than none Whoa a kiss with a fist is better than none

Love is a Suicide- Natalia Kills

You like the smell of blood When it's pumpin' like a factory Ooh, you like your words to cut You like to choose the best artillery I wonder who you're thinkin' of Who am I Am I the epitome Of everything you hate And you desire You love me like an enemy

It feels so surgical How you dissect every mistake I make

Love Me Dead- Ludo

She moves through moonbeams slowly She knows just how to hold me And when her edges soften, her body is my coffin I know she drains me slowly She wears me down to bones in bed... Must be the sign on my head, it says "Oh, love me dead!" You're a faith-healer on tv You're an office park without any trees Corporate and cold, gushing for gold, leave me alone

Love me cancerously Brrrot-dot-da-d-da-da! Brrrot-dot-da-d-da-da! How's your new boy? Does he know about me? You've got the mark of the beast You're born of a jackal! You're beautiful!

Lovefool- The Cardigans

Dear, I fear we're facing a problem You love me no longer, I know And maybe there is nothing That I can do to make you do Mama tells me I shouldn't bother That I ought to stick to another man A man that surely deserves me But I think you do! So I cry, and I pray, and I beg Love me, love me Say that you love me Fool me, fool me Go on and fool me Love me, love me Pretend that you love me Leave me, leave me Just say that you need me

The Luthors- Blake Neely

(instrumental)

Mama- My Chemical Romance

And when we go don't blame us, yeah. We'll let the fire just bathe us, yeah. You made us, oh, so famous. We'll never let you go. And when you go don't return to me my love. Mama, we're all full of lies. Mama, we're meant for the flies. And right now they're building a coffin your size, Mama, we're all full of lies.

Miss Murder- AFI 

With just a look they shook And heavens bowed before him. Simply a look can break your heart. The stars that pierce the sky; He left them all behind. We’re left to wonder why He left us all behind. 

Dreams of his crash won’t pass Oh, how they all adored him Beauty will last when spiraled down.

Mz. Hyde- Halestorm

Good girl gone bad, my poison is your remedy Better be scared, better be afraid Now that the beast is out of her cage And I know you Wanna risk it You know you Are so addicted Boy, you better run for your life

Never Surrender- Skillet

Do you know what it's like when You're scared to see yourself? Do you know what it's like when You wish you were someone else Who didn't need your help to get by? Do you know what it's like To wanna surrender? I don't wanna feel like this tomorrow I don't wanna live like this today Make me feel better I wanna feel better Stay with me here now And never surrender

Please Don’t Leave Me- Pink

I can be so mean when I wanna be, I am capable of really anything, I can cut you into pieces, When my heart is broken. Da da da da da Please, don't leave me [2x] I always say how I don't need you But it's always gonna come right back to this Please, don't leave me

Sometimes- Skillet

Sometimes I don't wanna be better Sometimes I can't be put back together Sometimes I find it hard to believe There's someone else who could be Just as messed up as me Sometimes don't deny That everything is wrong Sometimes rather die Than to admit it's my fault Sometimes when you cry I just don't care at all I don't know why I do the things I do to you but...

Starring Role- Marina and the Diamonds

It almost feels like a joke to play out a part When you are not the starring role in someone else's heart You know I'd rather walk alone than play a supporting role If I can't get the starring role Sometimes I ignore you, so I feel in control 'Cause really, I adore you, and I can't leave you alone Fed up with the fantasies that cover what is wrong Come on, baby, let's just get drunk, forget we don't get on

Stop Me- Natalia Kills

Darling, darling You know I never meant to drag you down Standing at the bar with your scars and your lonely heart So let's leave this dead-end town If I, if I run away with you tonight, tonight We could make the wrongs feel right, so right We could do some damage

Tell Me I’m a Wreck- Every Avenue

I could have been easier on you I could have been all you held onto I know I wasn't fair, I tried my best to care about you I know I could have been a better man But I always had to have the upper hand I'm struggling to see the better side of me But I can't take all your jabs and taunts You're pointing out my every fault And you wonder why I walked away

Toxic- Britney Spears

Baby, can’t you see I’m calling A guy like you Should wear a warning It’s dangerous I’m fallin’ There’s no escape I can’t wait I need a hit Baby, give me it You’re dangerous I’m lovin’ it

Villain- Hedley

I'm so cold and far away from home You're so tired and so damn alone It's darker and much harder to be me So far away from my reality I hate the way you look, I'm looking back I hate the way I look, you're looking too I think maybe I'm just falling, falling, falling And you kiss me like you know inside of me (let me lead you, let me follow) And you watch me fight my own insanity (let me lead you, let me follow)

You Can Do Better Than Me- Death Cab for Cutie

I'm starting to feel We stayed together out of fear of dying alone

I have to face the truth That no one could ever look at me like you do Like I'm something worth holding on to There's times I think of leaving But it's something I'll never do 'Cause you can do better than me But I can't do better than you

Young God- Halsey

He says, "Oh, baby girl, you know we're gonna be legends I'm the king and you're the queen and we will stumble through heaven If there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes”

But do you feel like a young god? You know the two of us are just young gods And we'll be flying through the streets with the people underneath And they're running, running, running 

My Story : Steven McCollum and my battle with a Chronic Illness

Why am I cycling 200 kilometres from Dundonald to Dunfanaghy instead of driving? Why am I going to put myself through the ten hours of pain and discomfort of the saddle to help raise money for the gastroenterology unit in the Ulster Hospital?

On 23rd October 2017 as I was being wheeled away to theatre on the hospital bed from the three women in my life, my wife, my mother and mother in law, not knowing if I would see their faces again, the words of Psalm 23 came to mind, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want”. As I was pushed through the narrow corridors of the Ulster Hospital I knew my shepherd was leading me and guiding me.

For over eighteen months I was battling a stomach problem, at first not knowing what it was, but as time went on and after numerous blood tests and too many colonoscopies to count, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis in May 2017. Ulcerative Colitis is a chronic illness that had drained away much joy and happiness in my life. Between March and November 2017 I spent forty four days as an inpatient in the Ulster Hospital, never mind all the day appointments that I had in between.

Although I cannot pin point a start date or the cause of the illness, symptoms began to develop over time. Extreme diarrhoea, abdominal pain and cramping, weight loss and fatigue. At the beginning of 2015 I started to experience symptoms of not being well, so I went to the doctor to get investigations and tests done, but nothing showed up. For 2 years I was able to hide my sickness and persevere through the pain and discomfort without many people knowing apart from my wife Hannah, but things started to go downhill quite quickly at the start of 2017.

The day before my 29th birthday, I headed up to the A&E at the Ulster Hospital to be seen regarding a football injury I got from the weekend before.  It had started with a pain in my ankle but then spread up my leg.  I lost over a stone in a week, lost my appetite, had extreme fatigue, a really low mood and had no motivation to do anything. If you have ever been at A&E on a Saturday afternoon, you will appreciate how noisy and chaotic it can be, but that day, it didn’t affect me.  I was so drained of energy and I lay down and went to sleep on the waiting rooms chairs.  I was soon admitted and tests revealed I had 4 clots in my lower leg, clots which were later discovered to be due to severe dehydration caused by the relentless diarrhoea. It wasn’t long after this that I was diagnosed as having an auto-immune disease known as Ulcerative Colitis.  

If you have experienced a tummy upset, food poisoning, or the need to rush to a toilet, you will understand a bit of what colitis is. Wherever I went I needed to know where the nearest toilet was, because I wouldn’t know when I would need it. For days upon days, I wouldn’t feel safe enough to leave my own house. I would need the toilet somewhere between 10-20 times a day, sometimes more. For three months, I didn’t have one good night’s sleep, up every hour to go to the toilet, this was draining physically and mentally. With colitis the urgency to go the toilet was unbearable, it came on me so quickly I would need to be at a toilet within a few minutes, sometimes seconds. This along with extreme fatigue made simple daily routine difficult and I ended up having to stop doing the things I enjoyed.  

Flare ups could happen at any time or any place, they didn’t discriminate. When I was having an MRI test, I needed to stop the test twice to jump off the machine and go to the toilet.

The joy of driving became difficult. I never knew how a car journey would go, a short 5-minute trip in the car could result in having to pull over.  Hannah ended up driving everywhere, because if I needed the toilet on route, I could jump out quickly.  

Queues and traffic lights became a source of great anxiety and stress.  If the light turned red the stress levels shot up and panic set in as it left me unsure if I would make it to the nearest toilet.  On one occasion, Hannah took me to her grandparents for lunch, a 10 minute drive away. A few minutes into the journey the pain started but we were stuck behind a car.  There was a queue of traffic behind us so we couldn’t pull in.  We phoned her granny to ask her to open the front door so that when we arrived I could go straight in and wouldn’t have to ring the doorbell and wait for it to be opened.  Hannah stopped right outside the front door so I could run in.  When I came back from the toilet, Hannah was in tears from the stress of those few minutes, from the pressure of having to get me there before it was too late.  This illness affected more than just me.

We had booked a holiday for September 2017 however as we started to think about what travelling would involve, the long queues for check-in, for security, for passport control,  queues which I couldn’t leave and return to, or how I would cope in an aeroplane with only 4 toilets or on the transfer to the hotel where there were no toilets and potentially a language barrier, we decided to cancel our holiday as the reality of travelling with colitis would be more stressful and would defeat the purpose a holiday.

At the beginning of October, only 5 months after receiving the diagnosis of colitis, I had a meeting with my consultant.  She advised that after numerous failed attempts to control my colitis through medical treatment, my body was getting sicker and weaker and that surgery was my only option.

On the morning of the 23rd October as I woke from the little sleep I got, the words of Psalm 118 came to suddenly to mind, “This is the day that the LORD has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it”. As I faced surgery that day, I was given a reassurance that this was God’s will for my life.  As I had prayed many a night, I prayed that God would grant me a miracle and heal me from my sickness, but that night, I still had the same symptoms, the same lack of rest but God taught me in that moment as I woke that what was going to happen that day, God had foreplaned and I was to rejoice and be glad in it.

The surgery required the removal of my large intestine which was full of ulcers as there was a fear that it could rupture.  It brought changes physically with a stoma which has been hard to adjust to and deal with. I have tried to hide myself and cover myself, trying to be as normal as possible. Having this illness has presented and continues to present so many challenges I never thought I would have to face.

Although this is a small insight into life with a chronic illness, I hope you have a greater understanding of what Ulcerative colitis is and how it affected me. Let me thank everyone who has been a real support to me, especially my wife, who through everything was by my side and my constant through everything.

With all this in mind, I wanted to give something back to the unit who cared for me. My consultant, Dr Addley, was amazing, it felt like she had genuine concern for me, not sugar coating anything and was a real help to Hannah through my sickness. Being in a hospital ward as an inpatient can be long, lonely and tiresome.  I want to be able to help other people that are/will be in a similar situation to me, so on the 31st August 2019, I will be cycling 200km to Donegal, to raise money for the gastro unit, and hope the money will be of great help to the staff and the patients now and in the future.

Let me finish with a verse that meant so much to me in my sickness.  After a long, sleepless night of pain and discomfort, I would read this verse and knew I would been given the strength each morning to face another day “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.” 

Nightmares were a constant for John. That much he knew. They haunted him almost every night, terrorizing him day by day in his waking hours.

Most of the time he couldn’t remember what the dreams were about. The horrors that stuck with him were the bad ones. The ones where his fears came to life. Where his true phobias and concerns were put against him.

When he remembered those dreams, he was quieter. Much more clingy. Needed them by his side, that reassurance he was desperate for. One time Lafayette had simply left the room with just a sweet smile to John for five minutes to get some things for their movie and returned to John curled up sobbing on the couch. Lafayette dropped that bag of popcorn and his water bottle, ran over and pulled John into his lap. When he tried to get his friend to tell him why, the freckled southerner just cried harder, pleaded they don’t leave him.

He called Hercules and Alexander home from work. It took them some time to get home, but the sight they saw when they got there broke their hearts. John clinging tightly to Lafayette, sniffling and whimpering, all out of tears to cry. His eyes were reddened, flushed cheeks tear-stained, lidded eyes focused on the ground, either not listening to them or refusing to meet their gaze.

Hercules sat on one side and took one of his hands, Alexander on the other. Alex was the one to lean forward, press his lips to John’s despite his current state. It made Laf and Herc smile to see that surprised look cross John’s face for a moment before he just melted between Lafayette’s arms around his waist and Alexander’s lips on his. It was hard to handle John when he got like that, but they’d manage.

The thing was, they didn’t know what went on in his head.

John was surrounded by shadows. It was dark, cold, lonely, and John was petrified. Had he not felt this before? This sick feeling to his stomach, an unknown voice in his head screaming one word.

Run. And he did.

Adrenaline and fear in his veins, hazel eyes wide and filled with fear plain and simple as he ran. He ran and ran and ran until he ran into something when he glanced behind himself. He looked up and the fear and horror running through his veins cooled to see his sort of fatherly best friend Hercules Mulligan. He would help, right? He would keep John safe.

A relieved smile grew on his lips as he near childishly reached up, expecting him to take his hand to pull him up. Then John felt smaller, glanced down to see he looked like he did when he was ten, from the long curly and untied locks to his black shorts and turtle t-shirt he loved so much. He looked up again and was filled with that fear to see the malicious grin on Hercules’s face. “What makes you think I’d help you?” That ‘friend’ of his asked and John’s smile faltered. “When have you ever helped me? Really? Pain in the ass.” He hissed, and suddenly John was falling with a scream as Herc just watched.

He felt like he was falling forever, petrified and confused. Then he hit the ground - hard. A low groan escaped him as he laid there a moment before slowly sitting up and looking around, brows furrowing to see their apartment. John got up, walked around and peered into the rooms. It seemed he was alone. Then he was in the doorway of the kitchen and felt a weight in his hand. Looked down to see his hand dripping blood, a picture frame in one hand and some glass lodged in his knuckles.

And oh god, when the pain hit him, he almost screamed, but he was silenced. Throat closed up. He felt tears burning his eyes, looked down at the picture frame to see a picture of he and Alex from a few years back - college roommates, best friends, a picture of Alex pressing a kiss to John’s cheek during a Halloween party at the Schuyler’s, John looking equal parts madly in love and surprised. Lafayette had taken the picture for them, Herc in the background with Peggy on his shoulders, and beside them on the other side of the picture was Aaron holding Frances on his shoulders, Peggy and Frances holding up the banner together that read in rainbow lettering, Happy Birthday, Laurens Twins.He remembered that day. The oh so wonderful Reynolds Pamphlet. He read the little story Alexander published. Slammed his fist so hard into the picture that it shattered. Which meant...

He looked up with wide eyes to see Alexander standing there, looking furious. Cursed him out for breaking the glass and ripped the frame from his hands. Cursed him more when he saw a little rip in the picture. Useless, he screamed in John’s face. Smacked his arm once. John smacked Alexander’s arm right back and was shoved to the ground for his efforts. John felt fear making his blood run cold, staring up at  Alexander wide-eyed as he ranted even though he was the one in the wrong.

Useless, hopeless, you’re the reason this happened, it’s all your fault. you’re a m o n s t e r

John let out a little sob as Alex ranted, huffed, screamed at John about how horrible he was. The sad thing was, John was starting to believe it. He scrambled to his feet when Alexander looked ready to punch him, turning and bolting through the other doorway. Where it’d normally lead to the bathroom, it led to a darkness. Surrounded by the dark with the door disappearing behind him.

Just like before, he glanced back, blanched to see nothing, ran into someone. He looked up with wide eyes to see Lafayette looking down at him. There was this strange look on his face and he found himself hesitant to be happy to see his best friend, not after what he’d been through.

Then Lafayette silently offered him a hand and John bit his lip, staring at him before he took his hand, let Lafayette pull him up. Suddenly they were in Lafayette’s old dorm room - fuck, John remembered this day too when he glanced at that calendar. The day he and Francis finally broke up and he spent the day with his best friend instead. Lafayette acted as he did on the day, all sweet, sympathetic smiles, hugs and forehead kisses.

John found himself melting when Lafayette pulled him into his lap, pressed a kiss to the top of his head and held him so close to his chest. John shifted, pressed his ear to Lafayette’s chest and relaxed as he listened to his heartbeat. It was pretty soothing after what he’d been through. “Why do Alex and Herc hate me?” He asked quietly, voice cracking, heart melting with the firm hand rubbing his back in soothing circles, the other arm wound around John’s waist as his hands clutched his shirt tight in his hands.

“You’re... Oh god. Laffy, you’re all that’s left..” He sobbed, shaking with his cries as he heard his best friend coo and murmur reassuring words in French. He didn’t understand a bit of it, but it was soothing nonetheless. “I-I love you. So much... I...” He shifted, sniffled and looked up at Laf, his brother watching him with that sympathetic but sweet smile on his face, eyes full of so much love and care for him. “I-I love you. Fuck... I... I-I love you and Alex, Laf. B-But I guess Alex doesn’t love me so much anymore... I guess I wouldn’t blame him...”

Then he snuggled closer, letting out a shaky breath as he tucked his face against his neck and whispered, “At least I still have you.” The silence took over for a few minutes, then Lafayette spoke and John tensed up.

“What makes you think you have me?”

John leaned back and looked up fearfully at him, biting his lip for a moment before he spoke. The look on Lafayette’s face didn’t change, and that was really throwing him off. “I-I’m sorry. If... If you don’t love me, I mean, I still have you as a friend. H-Herc ‘n Alex don’t like me anymore.” He explained quietly, but a chill ran down his spine at the dark look that crossed Lafayette’s face and stayed there.

It looked too familiar.

“What makes you think you have me?” He repeated and John’s expression dropped. His heart dropped into his belly. “No. No. Nonono- I need you, please don’t leave me.” He pleaded, feeling like he’d throw up at the disgusted look on Lafayette’s face as he roughly shoved John off his lap. The smaller man scrambled to his feet, trembling as he took and held Lafayette’s hand tightly, tears dripping down his face. “Don’t go, don’t go! Please, Laf! You promised! You said you’d always be there!” He cried, feeling terrified and even sicker with that laugh that ripped from his ‘brother’ as he shoved him on his ass. “You could not handle your father. You could not handle Francis. What makes you think you can handle me?”

Oh no. He looked up, scared to silence to see Francis Kinloch on one side of Lafayette and Henry Laurens on the other, both had their arms crossed, all three looking down at him in obvious disgust and loathing.

“Inútil.” Henry.

“Weak.” Francis.

“Non aimé et sans espoir.“ Lafayette.

“Wh-what?...” John stammered. He didn’t understand the French even know, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

“Who would love you?” Laf hissed, delivering a swift kick to his side that knocked him over, had him sobbing between his sadness and fear and the pain. “Who needs you? You’re hopeless!”

“Grow a backbone!”

“Prude. I bet he’s Hamilton’s little whore.”

“Oui, that would explain a lot.”

John just cried out again when Henry kicked him this time. Right as he was about to slam his heel into John’s head, John was sitting up with a heartbroken scream in bed, a cold sweat covering his skin and tears running down his face. He flailed, jerked and cried out as he tried to rapidly untangle himself from the covers. Needed out, needed air fuckfuckfuck- He grabbed his phone and stumbled out of the apartment, ran out to the sidewalk outside. Gasping and heaving for breath.

Threw up on the sidewalk and fell to his knees, thanking whatever god there was that no one was out to see him like this.

After fifteen minutes of coughing, heaving, scared and sick, he found himself in his car, driving to somewhere he didn’t know. He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He went on autopilot in the chilly air of New York at three AM.

That was how he found himself at Herc’s place. Parking lots and parks weren’t safe. Not at night. New York wasn’t safe at night - not in his eyes. Hercules’ place. That was safe. That was familiar. He didn’t have the bravery to get out of the car, to go see if Herc still wanted him around. To see if the dream was real or not. But he was too scared, too sick, too...

useless.

He didn’t know what happened. One moment he was staring at the wheel, heart racing in his chest and hyperventilating. The next moment he was slowly waking up - in a bed?

He stared up at the ceiling blearily before looking toward the nightstand to see the clock read it was ten AM.

He slowly sat up and jumped at a sudden thud, looking up with wide eyes to see Alexander in a chair at a desk. A book was on the ground. That explained the thud. “Jack! Thank god. Jesus fucking Christ, you scared us!” Alex gasped, rushing over. John flinched and he suddenly stopped, brows furrowing before he crouched down by the edge of the bed, taking John’s hand in his.

“Did someone hurt you?” Hesitation. He shook his head. “Did someone scare you?” More hesitation, then a slow nod. “Who?” With a shaky hand, he pointed to himself and Alex’s face softened.

“Wanna tell me what happened, love?” He asked softly, shifting to sit on the edge of the bed, gently cupping John’s cheek in his hand. “B-Bad dream.” He whispered, trembling. “Wh-where are we?”

“Herc’s place. He heard a fucking horn outside and found you passed out on your car. What happened, honey?”

“I...” John’s eyes welled up with tears and suddenly Alex pulled him close, held his head against his chest and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. That was soothing and John let himself explain, let his mouth run as he explained. How he woke up petrified. How he immediately went outside. Threw up. Drove to Herc’s. New York isn’t safe at night. Hyperventilating and lightheaded and suddenly darkness took over his vision and he was waking up there in bed.

Alex just held him through it all. Asked quietly if he could call Herc and Laf in and he shook his head. “... O-One at a time? My... My dream... I... I-I can’t handle it. N-Not all of you altogether.. B-But I wanna see Herc.”

“Want me to go while you two talk?” John looked so terrified of answering, breathing picking up and Alex quickly amended, “Hey, hey, shh. I’ll wait with Laf. It’s alright. I’ll be right outside, okay?”

That seemed to calm him and he nodded. Alexander left the room then and minutes later, Herc came in. He had a mug in his hand and a bottle in the other, setting the mug down and opening the bottle to give  John an aspirin which he happily took with whatever was in the mug - tea. John’s favorite green tea, in fact.

Now that was soothing and after setting the mug down, he shifted more to the side in the bed - Herc’s bed - and grabbed the man’s hand, pulling it until he laid down with him. Hercules chuckled, but he didn’t put up a fuss. Everyone ran through the day quietly. Hercules never left on John’s request, and by the end of the day, John had Lafayette cuddled up behind him, holding him close to his chest, Alexander in front of him, their hands holding onto each other and Hercules behind Alex, holding him close as well.

It was quiet and soothing. John stayed there quietly, eyes open, watched them rest. Catch up on what they lost because of him.

When the sun began to set and they all woke up, John hesitated. Told them about the dream. He didn’t want to. But they deserved to know. He couldn’t let his fears and concerns get in the way of his friendship with them all. He couldn’t. That was how the dream would come true.

They were all quiet for a long moment when he finished. One by one, they reassured him. “You help me all the time,” Herc said. “You listen to me. Give me advice on the things I sew. Hell, we all know I’m stronger than you but you’ve still tried to save me in bar fights. You’re my brother, man. I love you.”

Then Alexander. “I’m so, so sorry for that day, Jacky... You were gone, I was stressed and she was there. But it was not your fault, baby. Not at all. You’re not useless, or hopeless and you’re most definitely not a monster. You never were. I love you so, so much, you mean the world to me, Jack. I’m sorry.”

Then Lafayette. He was quiet longer, thinking very carefully about his words before nudging John. John shifted, rolled over and looked Laf in the eyes. Let him see the forming tears and fear. Alex and Herc just shifted to watch them as Lafayette gently cupped his cheek and gave him a soft smile, a kiss to the forehead.

“Mon ami, mon John... You are very lovable. You are no putain, mon chou. You are not hopeless. You’re very, very special to us.” He murmured, wiping away a few tears that dripped down John’s face. He shifted, had John sit up and move into his lap where he held his friend and kissed the top of his head. “You will always have me, mon chou. Je promets.” John looked helplessly over at Alex, whom just smiled so sweetly at him. “He promises, Jacky... We all do.”

Then John was full blown sobbing, unable to catch his breath, and this time, unlike last night, Lafayette, Alexander and Hercules were there to hold him through it, to coo words of reassurances to him and be there for him.

Hours later, quite a few talks and a full night’s rest, John finally sat Alex and Laf down an hour after they woke up while Herc made them breakfast. He hesitated, addressing Alex first, “Sabes lo que es poliromántico, ¿verdad?” He asked quietly, safe in Spanish as Alex nodded slowly, eyes widening in realization a moment later. He looked between John and Laf, leaving poor Lafayette in confusion before giving his nervous, freckled boyfriend the biggest grin. “¿Vas en serio?“ “Si.” “¿De verdad?” “Si, tonto.” “¡Yo también!” “Kinda had that figured.”

John turned his attention to the beyond confused Lafayette, giving him a shy smile before addressing Alex. “Wanna ask him?” “Yes!” “Calm down.” “Fuck no!” Lafayette laughed at Alexander’s enthusiasm, turning a kind smile to the little spitfire they called a friend as Alex spoke in rapid French. “Vous devez savoir ce qu'est le polyromantique.” “Pourquoi?”

Then Alex looked so excited, taking one of his hands and squeezing it. “Parce que nous voulons que vous soyez là avec nous!” Laf made such a face, lips quirking to the side, eyebrow raising and John had to cover his mouth to stifle a fit of childish giggles at the face. “Vraiment?” “Putain, oui!” “Je ne peux pas dire non à cela.”

It took some extra talks, mixtures between French, English and Spanish, before finally John took their hands, looked Alex in the eye as they both looked at John. “I love you.” He said so genuinely Alex swore he felt like crying to see so much love and care in John for him. Then he turned his gaze to Lafayette, once again repeating, “I love you.”

Then he was being pulled between them, squashed in hugs and kisses and he felt that old butterfly feeling in his stomach when Lafayette’s lips finally pressed to his, not a speck of jealousy between them. Not when there was so much love between them for each other. The dreams definitely didn’t matter. Not when he had the chance to fall asleep with his friends all around him and wake up to their smiling faces and reassurances of love and affection.

Imagine Jamie staying by your side while you're in Hospital

(A/N: For Anon, I hope you and everyone else enjoys this! Sorry, if it’s bad. It’s almost midnight and I’m super tired!) 

Imagine Jamie staying by your side while you're in Hospital

"Did you get it?" You asked as soon as you saw Jamie slip into the room, you propped yourself up waiting for an answer.

"I got it," He confirmed with a grin, producing a brown bag from behind his back.

"Thank God," You beamed in delight.

“Here catch…” He warned about to underarm the bad to you before stopping himself after remembering the state you were in, “Actually maybe not,”

“Good idea,” You chuckled, gently shaking your right arm which was confined in a cast and a subsequent sling.

He walked towards you and took a seat in the chair beside you. He pulled the table towards you and helped you sit up properly by moving your pillow and letting you use his arm as leverage.

“Thanks,” You said, breathing through the pain.

“Don’t mention it,” He reassured, grabbing hold of your good hand and kissing it.

“Alright,” You began, opening the bag that he placed on the table and pulling out a chocolate muffin, “ I thought I asked for a blueberry one?”

“But I knew you really wanted chocolate,” He countered, giving you the eye.

“Who has chocolate muffins for breakfast?” You questioned, teasingly, squinting at him.

“People who are stuck in the hospital and need cheering up,” He responded before grabbed his own breakfast out of the bag as well as placing the tray of coffees on the table as well.

“You think you know me well,” You remarked but taking a bit all the same.

“You enjoying yourself?” He smirked as crumbs fell from your mouth.

“Mmm,” You struggled to say with your mouthful which he chuckled at, you waited to chew and swallow before asking, “How did you get this past the nurses?”

“I pulled the cord on someone's machine.” He stated dead seriously, not looking at you.

Your eyes widen in shock.

“Y/N, I’m kidding,” He reassured laughing as he took a sip of coffee, “I just hid it behind my back and stayed close to the wall,”

“Bet that looked suspicious on the security camera,” You commented.

“But you’re glad I did it, aren’t you?” He countered.

“I am,” You confirmed, “I couldn’t eat any more of that hospital food, Jamie. I think it was making me sicker,”

“I doubt it,” He smirked, “But anyway enjoy breakfast from Ralphs instead of the hospital kitchen?”

“You went all the way to Ralphs?” You asked, taken aback.

“Of course I did, it’s your favourite,” He answered, honestly confused by your reaction.

“But it’s so far…” You reminded. “Well, it’s hardly like you could get it yourself,” He said.

“You didn’t have to do that,” You protested.

“I want too, you need something to cheer you up, and what better than breakfast from your favourite cafe?” He quizzed.

“I forget how much in love with me you are,” You remarked.

“Then I’ll have to remind you, every day, for the rest of your life,” He promised.

“You sound like you’re going to propose again,” You chuckled.

“I might have to,” He reminded.

“Have they still not found it?” You sighed.

“They say the bagged with the rest of your clothes but they just can’t find the bag,” He explained.

“I love that ring,” You frowned disappointedly.

“It will turn up,” He half-heartedly reassured.

“I hope so,” You commented before changing the subject so you didn’t have to dwell on the subject.

It had been bothering you since you woke up and Jamie told you that they had lost one of the bags with your personal belongings, the bag they lost unfortunately contained arguably your most important and significant possession.

The engagement ring Jamie had given you three months earlier.

You were constantly rubbing your hand where it had been before the accident as if you could rub it back to you. It had been a week and a half since the crash and you still hadn’t left the hospital. Granted you were in a coma for the first four days but still, you were getting restless and not to mention stir crazy.

The accident, well it was hardly an accident, happened during work. You and your partner Sonny were tracking a known drug dealer and suspected rapist. You were tailing him in your car before you both witnessed him in a drug deal. You went to apprehend him but one of his ‘associates’ spotted you getting out the car and your suspect ran away and into a car. You both raced back into your won car and began to chase after him. Starting the police chase. Luckily, you were driving as you were the only one who had been trained in high-speed chases while Sonny began calling in for backup. Unfortunately, for you, your suspects friends got there quicker than your backup.

He came out of nowhere and crashed into your side with such force that it sent your car into a tailspin and unfortunately into a lamppost that essentially crushed your car inwards on your side. Thankfully Sonny got away relatively unscathed apart from some cuts and bruising while you weren’t so lucky.

You sustained a mild concussion, multiple lacerations, a broken arm and several broken ribs which lead to a punctured lung. The surgery you needed to correct that was mainly the reason while you were still here as well as all the stitches you needed. And like you said for the first four days you were in a medically induced coma to give your body time to heal. But you were still here a week later after waking up.

You knew it would have been much harder on you if it weren’t from your fiancé Jamie. He had stayed by your side almost the entire time. He only left to change clothes, take a shower and buy food but besides from that, he remained by your side. Not prepared to leave you here alone despite your protests and reassurances that you would be okay. You were constantly being visited by the rest of his family, your co-workers, friends. Especially Sonny who felt guilty that you were here and he was okay even though you were driving and he had no control over what happened.

You and Jamie had been dating for three years at this point. Your anniversary was three months ago and it was on your anniversary that Jamie asked you to marry him in the same place that you had first met when you were teenagers. The park across from you high school on Staten Island. It wasn’t what you had expected but it was perfect. You had begun dating, years after first meeting after reconnecting when he became an officer. You were already a Detective and he reconnected with you after his station and your then station were working together. You were already five months into dating before you transferred to Manhattan’s Special Victims Unit which was housed in the station he was assigned to.

“Jamie, you need to leave!” You exclaimed hours after eating breakfast and hours into your daily does of daytime trash television.

“Why?” He asked, concerned and surprised, turning to look at you.

“Because I’m fine and you’re literally wasting your time sitting here with me,” You elaborated.

“Y/N, I’m not wasting my time sitting here with you. Spending time with you is never a waste of my time especially when you’re in a state like this,” He insisted.

“But Jamie, you’re making me feel guilty.” You whined, taking a deep breath and looking up at him as you were lying down and he was sitting in the seat beside you.

“What? Why?” He questioned.

“Because I’m okay and I’m capable of being here alone. I’m going to be out in a few days anyway.” You repeated.

“Y/N…” He began before trailing off.

“Jamie, I get it, okay?” You reassured, “I wouldn’t want to leave your side if the roles with reversed. I’d be glued to your side making sure you were okay and getting better,”

“So you understand,” He said.

“I do but I’ve realised that even though we want to do that it isn’t the best thing for us, you know? We’re over-protective of each other because are jobs are so dangerous and that fear of loosing each other is amplified when something does go wrong.” You continued to explain, “ But we can’t alway be there to protect each other. You can’t alway be by my side even though I wish you could. I feel like if we don’t do it now. It’s going to be harder when I go back to work.” 
 “I think you’re right,” He sighed.

“Aren’t I always?” You teased.

“I’m being silly aren’t I?” He asked.

“No, you’re being a good boyfriend,” He complimented, stretching your arm out and rubbing his shoulder lovingly.

“Fiancé,” He corrected.

“About that…” You joked.

“Don’t,” He warned, getting up and grabbing his jacket, “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes, I will be fine in a hospital with security, surrounded by doctors accompanied by trash TV.” You reassured jokingly. “You can call if you need anything,” He reminded.

“I’ll text and whatever I need you can bring when you come back tonight,” You reassured.

“Okay,” He breathed uncomfortably, you knew he still didn’t want to leave you alone, “I’ll see you later,”

He walked slowly towards the door, you think hoping that you would stop him and let him stay. But you knew in the long run that this would be better for the both of you. You couldn’t always be so protective of each other especially in the jobs you were in. He reached the door and opened it to leave.

“Hey, Jamie?” You called.

“Yeah?” He questioned, turning back to look at you.

“I love you,” You smiled.

“I love you too,” He returned with a grin.

You blew him a kiss and he winked at you before leaving.

You spent the rest of the day, watching TV and chatting with nurses and doctors. Sonny came and visited you doing his lunch break to check up on you and see how you were. Amanda came with him and brought flowers. They discussed the current cases they were handling with you while also giving you updates on the open cases you had before the accident. One of them was in court currently and you had Barba texting you updates but they gave you the rundown.

You missed Jamie throughout the day while he was gone but it just proved the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. You were even more executed to see him and you remembered why it was so great not to spend the whole day with your other half.

“Knock, knock,” Jamie said annoying his arrival before stepping into the room and walking over to you.

“Hey,” You smiled broadly, lifting up your good arm encouraging him to hug you.

He embraced you carefully, watchful not to harm you n your fragile state and gave you a kiss before sitting back down in the seat beside you like he had done for days prior.

“So,” You began, “How was your day?”

“I missed you,” He responded sweetly, grabbing your hand again.

“ I missed you too but I’m wondering if you did anything else other than that.” You countered, “Did you go back to work maybe?”

“I’m starting back tomorrow,” He informed.

“Good,” You nodded, “So what did you do today?”

“I took a shower, cleaned the apartment because I know you would kill me if you came back and saw it in the state it is in now,” He continued.

You nodded.

“And…” He started before trailing off.

“And…?” You related curious.

“I went looking for something,” He stated.

“Intelligence, common sense, dignity?” You suggested jokingly.

“It’s something of yours,” He continued.

“My dignity?” You demanded playfully with an overdramatic expression.

“No,” He chuckled before reaching inside his jacket and pulling out a familiar object, “This!”

“My ring,” You exclaimed, with a grin, “How?” 
 “I went looking for it myself. I had a feeling that it might have been put in one of the evidence bags and I was right,” He explained, looking down at the ring which he held in his fingers.

“You should be a detective,” You commented.

“I’m working on it,” He winked.

“So, are you giving me it back or are you having second thoughts?” You joked after a few seconds passed and he continued to stare at it.

“Y/N,” He began dramatically for your enjoyment while putting his hand out, indicating to you for yours which you happily obliged too, “ Will you do me the honour of agreeing to marry me for the second time?”

“I do,” You nodded dramatically while giggling as he slipped the ring back on to your finger.

Right, where it belonged.

↪ b a s i c s ;

N A M E: Rhiannon Cooper Nankova A G E: 25 P L A C E   O F   O R I G I N: Berkley, California G R O U P: None F C: Nina Dobrev

❝ There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable. ❞

↪ p e r s o n a l i t y ;

P O S I T I V E   T R A I T S: solicitous ; resolute N E G A T I V E   T R A I T S: insecure ; capricious

↪ b i o g r a p h y ;

L I F E   B E F O R E   T H E   O U T B R E A K:

“Rhiannon rings like bell through the night and wouldn’t you love to love her?”

Rhiannon Cooper Nankova was born to Ivan and Pamela Nankov on September 12th, 1991. Both professors at UC Berkeley ( Ivan in glaciology and Pamela in anthropology ), the two had waited longer than many of their peers to have a daughter and were in their early forties when she was born. Both having been active in the counterculture movement of the 1970s, they didn’t give Rhiannon the strict homes they’d been raised in. Named for the Fleetwood Mac song with the cool edge of Alice Cooper ( Ivan was by no means traditional, and did not even blink when Pamela rebuked the idea of adding a patronymic name for their daughter ), Rhiannon found herself the odd girl out in many settings. Her parents were older, hippie professors from UC Berkeley, her father from a country no one her age had even heard of and their parents often assumed was Russian instead of Bulgarian. Instead of allowing herself to feel as though she didn’t belong, Rhiannon made it clear early on that she didn’t need friends to find her own happiness, which could be made in public gardens with her dog Bogart, or in the simplicity of a good book, curled up in the hammock that hung off her back porch.

The bright-eyed child with a halo of chestnut locks grew into a charming, delightful girl. With a gregarious personality and a strong sense of self, she cruised through life well-liked and happy. After finishing high school, Rhiannon opted to live an ‘artist’s life’ ( as her mother so often called it ) in a loft in downtown Berkeley while working part-time at a trendy restaurant and helping her mother with her research. With her parents’ support, she spent little time forcing herself to create and though their connections got her gallery shows from time to time, she didn’t actively pursue a career–her dreams mercurial. With her passion distributed across so many different interests and genres, nothing she did seemed to ‘belong’ together and after several years of forcing herself to make something cohesive, Rhiannon accepted that she was never going to make it big in the art world. 

Frustrated and unsure of her future, but tired of working a dead-end waitressing job–even if the tips were enough to accommodate her lifestyle–Rhiannon started to take advantage of the free tuition at Berkeley. A couple terms in and she still didn’t know what she wanted. Rhiannon enjoyed the classes and learning, the environment and the social aspects, but wondered if it wasn’t a waste of her time. Nothing seemed to grab onto her and insist that it was meant for her and she for it.

When her mother took sabbatical to travel with her father to Antarctica, planning to stay for a year to write an ethnography on the scientists’ lives during the harsh winters after being inspired by a thousand and one stories Ivan brought back from his research trips, Rhiannon was eager to tag along. The experience was the most unique thing she could think of doing and she was eager for the adventure it promised; a stark contract when held up against her cool summer days off lounging on the balcony of her loft apartment.

The expedition went off without a hitch, aside from some terrifying weather on the plane ride in. Rhiannon felt EXHILARATED. The cold air stung her eyes, the silence deafening to her ears, but the harsh wintry landscape was unlike anything she’d ever seen. The first couple of months were grueling, but the novelty didn’t wear off. Not even when they ran out of “freshies” and were stuck eating non perishables. Not when a guy freaked out over not getting cheese on his burger and threw a tray at the cook after mumbling over an empty plate for half an hour. Nothing seemed to tarnish the invigorating landscape that had captured the hearts of the entire Nankov family. Rhiannon had found the right place to rekindle her interest and cure her of her prodigal boredom.

L I F E   D U R I N G   T H E   O U T B R E A K:

“All your life you’ve never seen woman taken by the wind”

The Nankov family was still in Antarctica when the outbreak occurred. When the internet was knocked out, neither were shocked or surprised. They had a supply ship coming from France to replenish their stores and with it would bring new blood onto the continent which meant stories from the outside, magazines, and the WORKS. But when the ship finally docked, it brought with it something worse than than a beat-up outdated copy of Italian Vogue or Rolling Stone. The crew were shaken up–they’d stopped in Argentina to pick some of the awaited scientists on their way to the continent and things had only gone south from there.

During the two-day trip, one of them had gotten feverish and sick.Twelve hours before docking, he “fucking snapped” and attacked the doctor in the ship’s infirmary. ‘A wounded animal will bite when cornered,’ one of the ship’s crew said bleakly. After a short scuffle, the scientist was killed when he was shoved back and slipped, striking the back of his head on a medical supply cart. No one was more shaken up than the physician who’d had her arm bitten in the attack. She was brought in immediately to see the physicians on base after she developed a fever and chills–signs, Rhiannon overheard, that might be indicative of sepsis.

Pamela had always been a compassionate woman. When she’d heard about the sickness the physician faced, she confessed to Rhiannon that it was hard for her not to see herself in the same professional woman’s shoes. With no family accompanying her, Rhiannon suggested her mother visit the woman, if not for her own peace of mind, then at least to give the sick woman a comforting hand. If nothing else, she could give the medical crew their much needed break to get some rest for themselves after a long day.

Pamela brought the woman clean clothes, a cool rag, and a book–hoping to ease her woes–but the physician was much sicker than she had allowed herself to hear. Resolved to be strong, Pamela spent the woman’s final moments with her–wiping sweat from her feverish forehead with a cool rag, humming softly to her the tunes of her favorite songs fromRumours. Halfway through Landslide the woman began to arrest and Pamela called for help, holding her hand in tears. If someone heard her cries, no one came. The physician passed away, delicate hands cooling quickly in Pamela’s clammy, shaking grip.

When the medical team members returned after filling their bellies and resting their weary eyes, they were horrified by the amount of blood in the room. Their terror was short lived, as their attending physician and the woman who’d come to give her compassion tore through their necks with expert finesse for a couple of monsters so fresh and inexperienced of maiming. The group made it through the corridors and into the cafeteria before they were gunned down by a toastie who’d been heading through the caf on his way to repaint his own quarters with his brains after spending six hours crying for no reason he could figure out. After that he dug his heels in and clung to living harder than he’d ever clung to anything in his life.

The outbreak in antarctica was FRIGHTENING but quickly contained. Those left on the base were clever enough to connect their recent loss of contact with the outside world with the disease brought with supplies. They chose–unanimously, but with heavy grief–to stay on base as long as they could before leaving on the ship that brought the virus to them in the first place. Ivan had never felt the pressure to be so strong as he did now, a grieving daughter held tightly in his arms as they watched the love of his life burn alongside the bodies of the other infected. The two learned to be strong for each other, but in the process never allowed themselves the shelter in grieving with one another. ‘We’ll keep living.’ Ivan would say, blue eyes fixed ahead on the distant glaciers he’d once loved that broke through the ocean in white sheets, so cold at their core they were blue–like the hottest part of a flame.

L I F E   A F T E R   T H E   O U T B R E A K: 

“She rules her life like a fine skylark and when the sky is starless”

After another year, supplies had run so low that they had no hope of surviving without leaving their barren, but LIVING wasteland. Rhiannon kissed the snow goodbye from the hull of the boat as flakes landed on her lips and eyelashes. Her favorite place in the world might only have her again in her dreams and she was terrified of the world that she was returning to. After docking in Ushuaia, Argentina the Americans left alive made their way home–uncertain of what else they could do aside from looking for their loved ones and hoping for the best. 

Ivan and Rhiannon had little hope to returning to Berkeley, both of them shared the unspoken feeling that returning home to a California with no sun ( no Pamela ) was as comforting as volunteering to live in a crypt. Cobwebs clung to their memories, suffocating and binding. There was nothing left for them there. The two heard of Cheyenne from some traders who’d helped them out with an extra map ( not all human kindness had been sucked from the world, it would seem ). 

The pair made their way to the city, which her father was convinced shined in the Wyoming wasteland like glittering ice. Those cold, distant eyes held smiles once again and the man who’d held her hand and walked her to school everyday seemed to return. One morning he left to catch some breakfast near the Colorado River. She waited five days for him before she let him go. Even a lark knows when its song is done. As far as Rhiannon knows, out of all those she left the frozen south with, she’s the only one who survived. 

The prodigal, childish girl she once was became replaced with a stronger, faster girl–still frightened of the world around her and the DEATH, but rising to the challenge of survival. It seems any courageous part of her, despite her determination to keep it, wavers with the overwhelming loneliness of being without her family. Since she’s arrived in Cheyenne after finding nothing worth living for in California, she’s been trying to rebuild herself and figuring out a skillset she can actually use. Still, the weight of survival buckles her knees some days and she cannot help but break down–in private moments, in desperate hope–regretting every small thing she might have redone if given half a chance.

Looking for a long term rp buddy

This is a drug addict!Cas roleplay - a 70's AU, I'm looking for a Dean. Triggers: Drug use. Also keep in mind that homophobia was a big thing in that time. You can choose who Dean is and what he does in life. You can choose his entire back story. My starter is very long but you don't have to write as much. I would still like literal replies, and no one liners please. *** When he thought about it, Castiel's life had never been very good. From the very beginning, he'd suffered from anxiety. He'd experienced his first panic attacks when he was a child, at the age of six. They could get pretty bad, to the point where he thought he was going to die. It had never been anything but an illusion, although he'd had a few fainting episodes. He'd ended up getting more scared of the panic attacks themselves than of the things that caused them. At first, his parents had put up with him. They had helped, had brought him to different doctors, but as time went by, it seemed they had stopped to care. Castiel knew he'd been nothing more than a bother to them. He had tried, though. He had tried so hard. Castiel had always been desperate to please his parents, to follow their commands, understand what they said was right. He had never truly managed to. At least not in their opinion. He had been named after an angel, his parents being extremely religious. They had a conception of things that Castiel had never quite been able to grasp. Being a lonely child had left scars on him. It had all started when his parents had begun questioning his sympathies, and his preferences. It seemed it had become clear to them before it even occurred to Castiel, that he was not particularly attracted to women. Castiel's teenage years had not been easier. He had never completely understood what the problem was, but as soon as his parents started having doubts over his sexual orientation, they had opted for a different kind of behavior with him. Suddenly, he was nothing but a disappointment, a failure, a black sheep among a flock whose white wool had been defined by his parents' unique rules. Castiel had done something wrong, something he could not help. Hearing those words over and over again, never managing to be enough despite how hard he tried, it had destroyed whatever confidence he still had. It had crushed every last piece of self esteem he possessed. Castiel hadn't understood what he'd done that was so wrong. He'd started getting depressed in addition to it all, but had never done anything to get better. Life had become unbearable, and it all came crashing down, when he'd made it official. His parents had caught him kissing a man one day, and the very next day, he got kicked out of his house. The entirety of society seemed to agree with his parents. What he was was wrong. He was a failure, a freak. He was sicker than he'd first thought. Needless to say, everything had gone to hell from then on. He had no money, no belongings. He couldn't continue his studies because he had no way of paying them. Nobody agreed to rent him an apartment because he didn't have a stable job, or anyone willing to vouch for him in case something happened and he wasn't able to pay rent. Thankfully, one of the only friends he had was nice enough to suggest something for him. Seeing how much Castiel was struggling, Balthazar offered him a small room he owned next to the one he lived in. He made him a price, and Castiel knew he couldn't refuse. He'd discovered drugs a few days after he got a job. Balthazar had been the one to find it for him. He knew the person hiring. It was how Castiel had become a cashier at the nearby gas station. It wasn't originally the job he would have wanted to do, but considering his situation he had had no other choice. The problem was, Castiel wasn't any happier. He constantly felt depressed, his mind filled with dark, very dark thoughts. Balthazar introduced him to drugs. Castiel had always known his friend was quite fond of illegal products. Balthazar usually stuck to drugs like marijuana and occasionally cocain. He'd made Castiel try once. Before he knew it, Castiel got addicted. He liked the way it made his problems go away, loved how it made him forget every harmful thing he'd ever heard. He didn't feel depressed when he was high, he didn't have panic attacks, didn't feel anxious. It didn't make the fallout any easier, though. Life became infinitely harder when he wasn't on drugs. He tried to get high as often as he could. It was so much easier to run away from his problems than to face them. Castiel knew he shouldn't. He finally had a job, a way to get back on his feet, but he couldn't stop. He didn't even try. Taking drugs made him happy. It made his despair disappear, his worries vanish into thin air. It created a perfect illusion of a less miserable life than the one he was actually living. He wasn't the same man, when he was on drugs. He almost looked happy. He found he was snarkier, smiled much more, behaved like he didn't have a care in the world. He could never get enough, unfortunately. Soon, he needed more drugs, and stronger ones, too. He knew it wasn't good, but he couldn't stop. He'd started struggling again. He had terrible panic attacks when he was down, his hands were constantly shaking. He had trouble focusing at work. He could barely pay rent before, but now, with the money he used for the drugs, it was worse. Castiel didn't stop. If it got him killed, then so be it, he figured. He envied the people whose life was simple without drugs, but he couldn't think of a life without them anymore. Now, he was at the counter of the gas station he was working in, trying to look like his hands weren't trembling from the lack of drugs. The man coming up to him caught his eye though. He was a bit taller than him, had fascinating green eyes. He was just a client among others, but Castiel would have drooled if he hadn't known better and hadn't spent his whole life hiding what he was. "Hello." He said softly, mechanically, reaching for the articles the man was buying.

I feel like I've been doing nothing but running around for days and I hate it, I have no energy, I don't have any breaks from this point forward. I just...I'm so tired.

Last week was the only possible summer break I was gonna get considering I have to take summer courses this year so I spent the entire week making the best of my time off, sleeping in late and staying up late and just overall being a lazy bum. I didn't really have any opportunities to get school supplies between my parents' work schedules and how slow some of my teachers were with uploading their syllabi and stuff so I just figured I could buy everything during the first week when I got back. I felt like most teachers don't require you to have all the stuff on the very first day, anyways. After all, I ordered my textbooks either through Amazon or the school's bookstore's website so I could just pick them up today and everything would be golden. It honestly feels like I've been running non-stop since Friday, though. We had meatloaf for dinner on Thursday night and it didn't taste right, but I don't know if there was actually something wrong with it or if it was just my nerves acting up on me. My parents said it tasted fine to them. I was up all night with bathroom problems and insomnia. I ended up only getting four and a half hours of sleep that night and had to be up super early that morning for my big birthday trip. I was going to spend my birthday weekend with my boyfriend, which I couldn't have been more excited about. That fact didn't exactly help my insomnia. Actually, it pretty much caused it. Anyway, I had to be up bright and early at 8am (which is early for me) so we could leave by 9:30am. We decided to take my grandma's car because it's bigger and we definitely needed the space. Me, my parents, my grandmother, and my boyfriend's mother all piled into the car together and spent the longest car ride ever all crammed into the same car. Normally the ride is only 4.5 hours long and I thought I might be able to sleep on the trip up but that wasn't happening. I was smushed in the middle of the backseat between both my mom and his with a shitty stomach. I brushed it off as nerves, getting that same excited butterfly feeling as a kid on the day of a field trip does. I couldn't even eat breakfast and so my stomach was caught between feeling deathly hungry and disgustingly crampy. It was hunger and nausea and almost even PMS like cramps all at once. It was that kind of nausea where no matter how hungry you are, getting near food makes your gag reflex go off and you have to force yourself to swallow every bite you take. Also didn't help that I kept suffering from some serious cotton-mouth so it kept feeling like I had to try and dry swallow my food. We stopped at a McDonald's halfway through the drive and I tried my best to eat my burger and fries but all I could think about was how weirdly colored the burger looked and how there were too many onions, too much ketchup and mustard, how bothersome my stomach felt, and that Viggo Mortensen quote about the stark contrast between a freshly made and cold McDonald's fry. Also didn't help that we decided to sit outside where it was hot as hell and a million birds kept eyeing us up trying to get to our food, coming dangerously close with their mouths open. Between that little break and a setback after nearly getting in a car accident (we had only been on the road about a 45mins to an hour, it seems, when the car in front of us got in a brutal accident where the entire front of his vehicle got smashed in and it was my dad's responsibility was to pull over, assess the damage, make sure everyone was okay, and wait until highway patrol showed up), we got to my boyfriend's house much later than anticipated. It was about 4pm when we showed up-- I was tired and nauseous and I wanted nothing more than to just relax and spend time with my boyfriend. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. He had work at 5pm which meant he left the house at 4:30pm and he didn't get off until 11:30pm. Rather than just go straight to bed, his mother and I chilled on the couch for a very short period of time before my parents and grandma showed up and we all went out for pizza. On one hand, I was happy to have gone since the pizza place we went to makes great, ginormous pizzas (their motto is literally "Slices as big as your head") and the atmosphere of the restaurant itself is really cool but on the other hand, I was so tired and felt so sick, I was in one of those states where a part of me just wanted to go to bed but the other half knew I would never be able to get to sleep anyways so I might as well say fuck it and suffer. Like always, we had a lot of leftovers so we packed up the remaining slices in a box to take back to my boyfriend for when he got off work. Considering my parents had never seen my boyfriend's workplace before, we decided to go walk around and check it the local store. HIs mother and I have been there countless times but my parents and grandmother never had so it was nice getting to show them around and see my boyfriend a bit in the process. We had to buy a couple things, anyways. The place was pretty much dead except for a few late-night stragglers but it was kind of funny having such a big group of people all in different places wandering around the store. I don't know why but I kind of liked the feel of it. There's something kind of satisfying about it to me for some strange reason. We left the place at about 9 or 9:30 and his mother and I went back to his place where I pretty much went straight to bed. I slept for a few hours before my boyfriend accidentally woke me up when he came home, turning on the light and taking his shoes off. He was exhausted-- and after a shift like that, who wouldn't be?-- but at least he was able to get Saturday (my birthday) off, which I was unbelievably pleased to hear. He went to sleep pretty easily but I, on the other hand, had trouble falling back asleep. I kept tossing and turning, my stomach was killing me, and all I could think about was my birthday the next day. I've always gotten relatively anxious on and around my birthday but moreso this year than ever. Ironically enough, it all leads back to my mom. When I was a kid, she treated every holiday and birthday like it was this huge, special event and she'd always go all out. She wanted to make each holiday super fucking special which I understand because they're big days and they deserve to be treated as such but at the same time, it always makes me feel like every holiday needs to be picture perfect and that we need to go all out every year and make a huge deal out of everything. It adds a lot of unnecessary anxiety that I truthfully hate but have no idea how to ever get rid of. This year, however, it was even more than just that looming over my head. My birthday last year was absolutely terrible. I had had a difficult year and was looking forward to wiping the slate clean once I turned 19 only to spend the majority of my birthday stuck in a hospital triage room right across the hallway from the bathroom where some woman was violently puking with the door wide open. My mom had her coworkers at the doctor's office she works at across the street take her blood pressure just out of sheer curiosity and it was something like 200/80 and she was rushed right to the emergency room for fear of having a stroke. It was pretty much the worst birthday of my life both because of how I spent it (from the selfish perspective) and the fact that my mom very much coudld've suffered from a stroke or worse, died. I know the odds of something like that happening again were next to none but at the same time, I just couldn't help but fear that something terrible might happen again. Of course, the car accident on the drive up wasn't great but at least nobody was physically hurt. Not only that, but the thought of turning 20 was terrifying to me. I'm still terrified by it. Teenagerhood is just such a huge part of life, it's such a time of change and experience, that it felt weird leaving it behind and having to admit that I am officially, undoubtedly an adult now. There's no turning back. I'm stuck here and it's just going to continue getting worse and worse from here on out. Nothing made me realize this more than my actual birthday, though. I woke up way too early only to end up going back to sleep and being woken up by his mother (the both of us). We all had plans, important things we needed to take care of. I didn't have the luxury of laying around in my pajamas watching TV all day. Yep, gone are the days of celebrating by doing nothing. Instead, I spent the day doing perhaps the most adult thing ever: househunting. And that's when things really started to hit me. My boyfriend and I drove around in his car with my parents and his mom and my grandma all in her car either following or leading us. It was kind of tedious but more than that, it was terrifying. It wasn't until we were driving around looking at these places that I realized the reality of the situation. I was 20 years old, in a serious relationship, and preparing to get my associate's degree and move out of my parent's house and into an apartment with my boyfriend where I'd be attending a university for an even bigger degree. The reality of that was absolutely horrifying to me not because I don't want that because I do-- believe me, I do-- but more because I don't think I quite realized how grown-up I was becoming before. Now all of a sudden I'm an adult-- really, truly, officially an adult and I have all these adult plans and responsibilities. I just feel like everything came up so quickly and I almost don't know if I'm ready for it all yet. I'm scared. Of course, this didn't help my stomach issues and left me feeling even sicker by the time dinner rolled around. My grandma was getting crabby looking at houses-- she doesn't want me to leave and was making it very difficult to think critically about things considering she was convinced the first place we looked at, some shitty place in the ghetto where someone got shot on the next street over, was the best possible place for us and then even said "I think she should just stay home and finish her four year degree at the college she's at now" to which my dad apparently nearly jumped on her and very frustratedly said "THEY DON'T OFFER WHAT SHE WANTS TO DO HERE" which is very true. They went back to their hotel afterwards but my boyfriend, his mom, and I drove around a bit more afterwards to check out a few other places on our own. Afterwards, we went back to his place to chill for a little bit before leaving for my birthday dinner. I was originally excited because I had made plans to have dinner at one of my favorite Asian restaurants in the area, a super casual place with really great food, but I was honestly so shaken up/panicky that I could barely eat and decided to scrap my plans of having Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches instead of birthday cake afterward. I honestly felt disappointed in myself for feeling the way I did and deciding to call off the celebration like that but at the same time, I knew I wasn't feeling great and that if I pushed my feelings aside and just powered through, I knew I'd get sick which would just completely ruin my birthday. I don't think I've ever vomitted on my birthday and I really hope I never do. Things like that happening on holidays just make me so outraeously nervous, and I know if it ever did happen I'd be traumatized and terrified for every year thereafter that it would happen again (I think it's important to note that I am highly emetophobic). It made me feel even worse considering my cousin and his wife, whose wedding I attended in February, drove down from their nearby town to join us for dinner and such afterwards. This would be the third time we've all been together for some meal-inclusive event, two of which I have ended up feeling sick and panicky like this during (the other being their wedding reception). They insisted on getting these cookies from this place nearby considering the ice cream sandwiches weren't going to happen but I didn't eat any of those, either. After dinner, they followed my parents and grandma back to their hotel in the middle of nowhere (which was honestly really eerie and I hated going there) which my boyfriend and his mother and I went to after stopping at the grocery store to pick up some lottery tickets she insisted I fill out and get for my birthday. Once we got to my parents' hotel, we sat around talking and I opened my presents from my grandma, my boyfriend, and his mother-- my cousin and his wife didn't get me anything and I opened the stuff from my parents the night before we left. After my cousin and his wife left, we stuck around for a little while longer where the conversation took a very discomforting turn. Somehow we got on the subject of deadly injuries to which my dad outlined in great detail his major accident back in the 1980s when he nearly lost his arm in a printing press. I've heard the story before but he went into great detail with the help of my grandmother about all the disgusting things I really didn't want to hear about on my birthday with an already queasy stomach. We left shortly after to go back to my boyfriend's place where we sat up and watched about five episodes of Rick and Morty together (neither of us had ever watched it before but decided to give it a shot, after my boyfriend convinced me through it's parody-ness of Back to the Future) before heading to bed which I started feeling a little better after but still not great. I hated waking up Sunday morning knowing I would have to leave that day and my stomach still wasn't feeling great when I first woke up, but after a while I started to come around a little bit. My parents and grandma had already eaten breakfast at their hotel and after checking out, drove around town a bit looking at some of the other places they didn't get to see yesterday and reconsidering some of the places they did see. By the time my boyfriend and I woke up and got ready, it was nearly noon and we hadn't eaten anything yet that day so we met up with my family at a local McDonalds to get something to eat and then met up back at my boyfriend's place to start packing our stuff into the car and get ready to head out. I hated leaving but I knew I had no choice. My boyfriend had to be into work at 2pm anyways so we left right before he had to leave, anyways. I didn't cry this time but I was definitely still extremely sad to say goodbye to him. All I really wanted to do was just stay in bed all day with him and try and nurse my stomach back to health but I knew that wasn't possible. He had work that afternoon and I had class the next day. So long as I was leaving, though, once I was in the car I wanted nothing more than to be home as soon as possible. I was cramped in the backseat yet again and this time my grandma was even crabbier than she had been before (even though she had honestly been crabby all weekend between the apartment issue, the university comment, and some other things: we were looking at this one place and she said some snarky remark to me about "You've got champagne taste but a beer wallet" insinuating that just because I had a limited budget to spend on housing that I had to live somewhere crappy or something [I just about jumped on her when she said that honestly]; at the hotel after opening my presents, I kept begging everyone to please stop talking about the gross shit because I was already nauseous and was starting to feel even sicker, to which my grandma said I needed to be stronger and started going off on this morality rant about how even though we've all been through shit, just proves we need to be stronger or something; that last one ties into something she said on the car ride home. She was commenting on my nervous stomach issues again (and my anxiety) and told me that if I didn't get over it, I'd never get to my mom's age or something as if she was insinuating that I'd die if I kept this stuff up. As if that is supposed to calm my anxiety. I nearly jumped on her then, too, and both my mom and my boyfriend's could see I was pissed but I held my tongue, took a shot of my water, and just folded my arms across my chest and leaned back in my seat. If anything, I felt bad for my boyfriend's mother-- she had never really experienced my grandmother's ultimate bitchiness firsthand before but now she knows what we have to put up with-- she was telling me how the woman was just complaining about every little thing the entire time we were driving around looking at places to rent.). The drive home felt even longer than ever, though, which didn't help. We stopped at the halfway point to get an early dinner at one of my dad's favorite Irish pubs, to which I ordered some great mac-n-cheese and ate quite a bit of it (more than I ever had before, truthfully) but even after getting some of my appetite back then, I still felt icky on the ride home. I was so terrified that the dinner wasn't going to agree with my stomach and I'd get sick or something. I think the fact we were in my grandma's car didn't help since it has a very distinct and very disgusting new car smell that was a trademark of any car my late grandpop owned considering he was a mechanic and took pride in his car. I vomited in his car once when I was really little and ever since, that smell has always made me nauseated. I definitely think that was a factor in my nervousness this past weekend, as well. But anyways, I kept trying to nap on the drive home but was never really all that successful. There was one brief period where my mom and I both fell asleep, which my boyfriend's mother got a picture of and sent to my boyfriend, but other than that, every other attempt was pretty futile. By the time we got home, the sun was just setting and everyone filed out back to their own living spaces pretty quickly. My grandma and boyfriend's mother said goodbye and went back home and my parents and I filed back into our rooms to unpack and get some sleep. Unfortunately, because of me, they got less sleep than they should've. Knowing I was starting my summer classes the next day, I logged onto my school account to make sure everything was squared away and prepared for the upcoming week of classes. However, when I got onto Canvas, the class that was supposed to start tonight was never published. In fact, it had completely disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. I seriously panicked, my first instinct being "oh my god it was cancelled." I checked my student email and sure enough, there was a message in there from Thursday night saying the class had been cancelled due to low enrollment. Needless to say, I fucking panicked. I lost my shit. I had spent such time meticulously trying to plan out my schedule and make everything work, make all the classes fit together like perfect puzzle pieces, and then the school goes and pulls this shit. There was no way I'd be able to slide with only three classes, either. I needed those credits. I basically barged into my parents room and woke them up screaming crying, having a total panic attack. I was at a loss. I had no idea what the fuck to do. So much was weighing on this semester that any fuck up whatsoever could cost me so much and affect not only myself but my boyfriend, too. There was way too much at stake. My mom and dad ended up coming into my room to try and figure what was going on and what had happened, and how to fix it, when I tearfully checked the course catalog and found a Spanish class that was at the same time on the same days for the same period of time as the other class I was registered for. I didn't really want to take a Spanish class after having already fulfiled the foreign language requirement for my degree in high school (I took three years of Spanish freshman through junior year) but it was the only thing that would work. Now my big concern was whether it would fulfill the elective credits I still needed. I figured it would since I couldn't imagine it fitting in anywhere else but at the same time, I wasn't entirely sure of anything anymore and was honestly very skeptical. Signing up for this class when I did, however, meant I had to prepare for the class in less than 24 hours which was definitely way more stressful than I needed. I paid for the class as soon as possible and spent the entire day running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to get shit straightened out. I had to fix my schedule page in my binder, get all my notebooks for all my classes which I didn't have time to do last week, print out the original receipt for the books I ordered, pick up the books I ordered from the campus bookstore, get a refund on the one for the class I was signed up for and purchase the book for the Spanish course instead, and then actually go to the Spanish class on top of some personal shit like washing my sheets, washing myself, and picking up the dog from the kennel he was staying in over the weekend. By the time everything was finished and I had checked out all the books I needed, I had fifteen minutes to get to class. I made it there in time, thank god, but apparently my teacher did not. She showed up about ten minutes late which sent me in a panic because there were signs on the door about cancelled Spanish classes and I was honestly so freaking terrified that one of them was for mine. I didn't have the strength to go through that again. The only reassuring thing was the fact that there were other people from my class standing outside waiting for the teacher, as well. I felt nothing short of relief when she finally did show up, and then struggled through the entire rest of the class with how dreadfully bored I was. The thing I never quite realized/expected fully was the reality of taking a class about material you already know, though. It was weird because all of this stuff was so familiar to me and yet at the same time, it's been three years since I've taken a Spanish class, just about, and I realized that there were a lot of things I had forgotten, too. I never really kept up with it after school so my retention slowly declined. Or maybe it was just that I was incredibly tired and sore all over from god only knows what and was fighting sleep the entire time. Probably a little of both, to be honest. Either way, the entire day was a fucking whirlwind and now I know i have to go back tomorow even earlier and do the class thing all over again. It's terrible, honestly, though. First day in and I'm already dead tired and wanting to quit. A part of me deep down just wants to quit, to give up, but I know I can't. I feel strange and uncomfortable taking summer classes, knowing all the public school kids will be out for summer in a week or so meanwhile I'll be stuck in classrooms doing schoolwork until August. It almost feels like some parallel dimension or vivid fever dream where nothing is quite right and everything feels nauseatingly uncomfortable. In a way, I almost somehow feel like I'm back in high school again. That's really weird and makes absolutely no sense but it's true. I feel weird and uncomfortable and unnerved and I know deep down it's not just about the summer classes. It's about everything. There's so many changes going on these days and everything is happening so quickly, I don't quite know how to handle all of it, to tell you the truth. Everyone is leaving, including myself, and it feels like everything I've known and held familiar is slipping through my fingers. Before long, my room will be empty and I'll be living 300 miles away from my parents, a totally independent adult. Nothing will ever be the same again and that's terrifying. Everything is just happening so fast. I know I keep saying that-- at this point I feel like I need a Ferris Bueller cameo-- but it's true. Everything is moving so fucking fast.

It's a little early but I've been thinking of my new years resolution. About how the past 2 years haven broken me and how I wanted to move on. This story is long but if you want to read go ahead.

It really started about 2 maybe 3 years ago when I started working at a fast food place in my town called roys. At first I was a cashier but later moved to kitchen. They realised that I was really good at it and was able to close kitchen earlier then most of the other workers. So they started making me close... 6 days a week. It was exhausting but I kept at it, even though I really really hated it. I got stressed where I would puke very often, I even had panic attacks that sent me home. Well I complained a lot to my family about it and around January of 2016 my dad got me into his work at a factory ( He is the top engineer ) and I got a place to run a machine.

Well I started off with training 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. 2 months and I was doing 10 hours a day for training. Very annoying but I did it. Well as soon as I passed training and got my schedule ( which was D shift ) my dad was able to get my GF the same job as me so we could work together. The job was a 12 hour shift rotation where I did one month of day shift then one month of night shift and etc.. Well things were fine and dandy, the pay was good and my GF was in training while she was promised to get on the same shift as me... well.. after training she got C shift. Which meant she worked the same days as me BUT I would work day and she would work night. It wasn't ok, in fact I was very mad because they didn't want us to get "distracted". But it was 2000$ per pay check from us and it was good money. So as months went on I started to get very very stressed. Everyone had unusually high expectations of me, like I was friggin monitored all day. I struggled a lot to keep up a good imagine for my dad even though I couldn't handle some things with the machines and would call for help. I often got scolded being told I should know what I'm doing ( there was one machine I wasn't trained on and wasn't shown how to change parts of the 2 machines ). I really hated my job at this point, the stress, the anxiety, the pure FEAR of being fired and the disappointment from my father. I felt like I was being eaten alive by my emotions, every single day I would cry having to work. My days off all I did was sleep because I was always exhausted. I couldn't see my friends, I barely saw my GF and I just felt alone. Trapped at this horrible job.

At that point of being there for nearly a year I broke. My depression got the best of me. One day I fell to the floor sobbing, I couldn't handle being there anymore. I couldn't quit, my dad just guilt tripped me. All i wanted to do is die.. I had plenty of ways of doing so in a dangerous environment but it then hit me hard realizing how terrified I was of dying, having to leave the most important person in my life. I went to my co worker on the next machine begging her to get our supervisor because I was getting suicidal. I was then dragged to office and of course my dad was there. They kept asking if I really felt that way and was there any way I could calm down to go back to work. I said No, I wanted to leave and go to the hospital. Eventually they said ok and let me just drive myself to the hospital ( which in my opinion don't let suicidal ppl drive at this point).

As I was being evaluated my dad, his gf and my GF came to the hospital. At that time I didn't know my GF was there till afterwards. When the evaluation was done I had to be sent to a mental ward because I was under watch. My dad said that my boss is willing to wait for me to come back and I just told him I don't know if I want to go back. Well his gf grabbed my shoulders and practically shook me saying I shouldn't quit and that I "loved my job". At the time I blocked her out because I was just flat out tired. My gf was upset because she wouldn't get to see me for some time from this and I'm pretty sure this situation was very hard on her. In my mind, I felt free from my stress.

While I was in the hospital ward, all I ever did was sleep. I didn't like group sessions because ppl scare me. I didn't want to be awake, I didn't want to deal with the fact I was going to go back to work soon. My dad and his gf visited often, I would call my GF nearly everyday on the little phone they had. She even got to vist with my best friend who I consider as a sister to me. I was slowly getting the help I needed and then my dad told me to live with him to help recover and well dumb me said ok. I eventually left the ward to live with him and his gf while they went to look for a therapist and psychiatrist. During that time I had been sent from the hospital to a group therapy place nearly everyday for 4 some hours. In my opinion it didn't do squat bit the individual therapy helped a lot. Sad thing is that insurance didn't cover it and I paid out of pocket. It was 400$ per session and my dad refused to pay so I spent every penny I had doing these sessions. 3 or 4 months went by, the therapist came around and said i wasn't fit for working and wanted me to do disability. I was happy to know ( tho I didn't know about the hardships of it till later ). I told my dad and he flipped, he said I wasn't going to be lazy and become a bum. He said only the true disabled should have disability and I wanted to use it to be lazy and that I need to be a part of "society".

After that I was taken from that place and forced to see doctors of my dad's choosing. I kept arguing with him I wasn't going back to the factory that it was too much for me. He kept using the argument of good money and I worked less days then most ppl. Well I eventually did win and got to quit BUT I went back to the fast food place... hurrah. Of course of what happened last time repeated itself and not only that but I got sicker, more stressed and I wasn't paid for over a month because they messed up my papers... SO THAT WAS FUN. Not only was all this happening but they got very controlling. I stopped seeing my GF ( only texted ) and I wasn't allowed to have friends over because I was "recovering" and they think I only needed family. Like um ok my GF isn't family??? THEN THEY HAD THE NERVE! They just started sitting in during my sessions and told the doctor about MY problems. I didn't get to speak, they told the doctor things that weren't true. I had medications taken from me and changed. I was suddenly not considered ADHD anymore. The meds I got made me exhausted and I hated it. So my parents got all upset that I'm more sluggish and tired saying the medications are ruining me. They wanted me off them saying it won't "fix the problem" and kept begging my psychiatrist to take me off them even tho he clearly stated I shouldn't be off them.

I started to relapse in server depression. I had to change jobs to one closer to my parents house, well that job was 10x worse. I had no breaks, I couldn't even pee for more then 5 mins a day. I didn't know this and would go to the bathroom to calm my panic attacks down. I didn't want to be a burden at my new job. Well my coworker complained that I left her alone too often, we worked kitchen ( just me and her ) and apparently that's too hard on her to be alone... During the dead hours. I was taken aside and told to get my bladder fixed or I was fired. During all of this I was slowly breaking more, my dad got fed up that I would stay up late talking to me gf till 10pm cause god knows why they HAVE to wake me up at 6am everyday. He started restricting my phone and somehow was able to lock my phone from his??? First the internet went off at 9pm then he would completely lock my phone so I could use it after 10pm. Now mind you that my GF still worked at the factory so it was already hard to communicate with her. At this point I had no one. I was shut off from everyone.

I couldn't do it anymore, I was done. I completely relapsed with suicidal intentions at work again and hide in a corner of a dark room. Remember how I was a kitchen worker? I had giant knife all around me and I felt unsafe. I was terrified of hurting myself or my coworkers. Now at the time I was working with a cool guy that let me go calm down but I couldn't escape the thoughts and feelings so I called a hotline which said I need to go to the hospital. But they wouldn't let me drive and I needed a ride. My dad at this point said hospitals are a waste of time and money and I shouldn't go anymore for my depression. So I did the best thing i could think of and called my mom and well guess what. She didn't know I was suicidal this whole year! My dad never told her and she was livid with him. It was no wonder she didn't visit the mental ward!

She got me, I told my GF who just got off work so she speed 90mph down the highway ( I was an hour away ). I saw an emergency therapist who said I needed to move out and move with someone that can keep me safe. So I chose my GF and well the therapist told my dad off on phone saying he's too controlling and can't keep me at the house anymore. But even tho I moved and such I didn't realize all the harm my dad and his GF had cause to my baby. She argued with them saying they were controlling and abusing me. They even flat out insult me infront of her and called me out on things. They said she couldn't take care of me, they said we shouldn't even be together if I can't take care of myself and that I shouldn't rely on her. They said things like relationships arnt meant to rely on each other but be just partners. They nearly broke our engagement.. They nearly tore us apart. They even went as far as saying that I should be dating someone else or that it's ok if I'm having an affair with my best friend ( on days off I would go to her house to be away from my dad ).

But even so she stuck by my side and I shouldn't feel so blessed having her. I kept seeing my therapist but things got worse. The therapist was nice at first but every time I went I had to repeat the same story to him about my childhood. Of course he ignored that and only focused on what's going on with me and my dad and the fact I was gay? Like more then half of my sessions would be him rambling on how gay ppl are treated and how that causes depression. Of course I'm sitting there telling him my sexuality has nothing to do with my depression but he wouldn't listen. I felt ignored.

No matter how much I said that my whole life wad a struggle with my mental illness he ignored it. He then just had the nerve to say " you don't have depression, you just have self esteem issues" . . . . Excuse me? He rewrote my records with that and saying my meds were pointless. I couldn't even begin to explain how upset I was. So my next session I brought my GF with me and we talked about how terrified she's been with my depression and how much it was hurting her and how much I was hurting. At the end he just looked at me and asked... " do you think your psychotic?" And I was just baffled. I couldn't even think and I just slowly said "..no?" And he just turned to his desk saying "that's what he thought" and said i don't need disability and such. I just shattered that day. I stood up and left completely stunned. My feelings, my emotions and my struggles.. all for this? To be told I'm just having self esteem issues? That my whole life struggle with depression and wanting to die was just a small problem? I felt broken, I felt that all my problem were nothing. I refused to see a new therapist after that, that my problems were stupid and pointless and I can just get over it. I even cut my meds out, because apparently they were pointless. I went through horrible withdraw and my depression went out of control. There were times I get so upset I would just walk outside and leave. Because I felt like I deserve to die on the streets because I felt like a burden. And yet my GF has been fighting to keep me safe and in a good home.. sometime I feel like I don't deserve her. But I made a promise that I would get better. That I would never give up.

So for my new years resolution I want it to be the year I heal. The year I go and get real help because I know I have people who do care. I want to keep the promise I made to Nicole. I know my problems are real and that I should seek help. These past 2 years may have broken me but I'm going to do everything that I can to piece myself back together and be me again. And that is my promise.