"II. My longing for you - / too strong to keep within bounds / At least no one can blame me / when I go to you at night along the road of dreams. / III. The cicadas sing in the twilight / of my mountain village - / tonight, no one / will visit save the wind. / IV. Awake tonight with loneliness, / I cannot keep myself from longing / for the handsome moon. / V. This heart, / longing for you / breaks to a thousand pieces - / I wouldn't lose one." — Ono no Komachi, from The Ink Dark Moon (tr. Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani)

TOS Crew-Phobias

Been thinking about And The Children Shall Lead and how the kids play on everyone’s inner Beast, and trying to decipher what fears each crew member may have based on what the children made them do and see.

The asterisk means it’s either an approximation because their fear is too specific, or if they had this fear they’ve since developed means of coping

James Kirk: Autophobia

Autophobia: Fear of being alone

I feel like this one’s pretty obvious. People tend to make the argument that the Enterprise (the ship itself) is Kirk’s overpowering true love, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s more the friends and the life that he’s made within The Enterprise that he’s terrified of losing. Some of the places we see Jim at his most upset and afraid in the series are when he feels he’s been abandoned or is forcibly (and seemingly permanently) separated from the crew. How visibly upset he is on the empty Enterprise in This Side of Paradise and The Mark of Gideon, lashing out at Spock when the crew reluctantly relieves him of duty in The Deadly Years, and his deep resentment toward Deela when she kidnaps him in Wink of An Eye. This is also further reinforced by his actions in Star Trek: The Motion Picture & The Search for Spock. He’s also one of the two characters (the other being Sulu) where his fear counts as an actual phobia and not a hypothetical phobia, ingrained personality trait, or symptom of Neurodivergence.

S’chn T’gai Spock: *OCD (fear of losing control)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Obsessive thoughts that lead to repetitive actions.

If anything what we might perceive as OCD-like (or at least Neurodivergent) behavior may be typical of the Vulcan condition. I don’t think Spock has OCD, or at least I don’t know enough about it to say for sure, but what came up whenever I looked up “fear of hurting others/losing control” it came up without fail. While we don’t actually get to see whatever is making Spock’s hand tremble, momentarily defy orders and act as though everything is fine. I think we can surmise that his Beast convinced him that following the order would somehow hurt Jim or that he would be possessed/controlled to do so. Operation: Annihilate, Amok Time, Plato’s Stepchildren and essentially Spock’s whole character arc prove this to be true.

Bones: *Hyper-Empathy/Thanatophobia

Thanatophobia: Fear of death, dying, watching others die and/or others watching you die

There is a headcanon that Dr. McCoy is autistic with the hyper-empathy symptom, meaning he has a really hard time watching others suffer. This may have been the reason he became a doctor in the first place, or became worse/was triggered by his father’s death. While not technically a phobia and we don’t see Bones face his Beast in ATCSL. Evidence from other episodes supports this, Miri, Metamorphosis, Plato’s Stepchildren, The Empath, and For The World is Hollow & I Have Touched The Sky all heavily support this.

Scotty-Astrophobia

Astrophobia: Fear of getting lost or dying in space

Seems like kind of a ridiculous fear for someone who builds, maintains, and lives starships to have right? Maybe, but if that is something he’s deeply afraid of, it would make his surpassing ability to make certain the ship doesn’t explode despite impossible odds make plenty of sense. I don’t think it’s space itself that freaks Scotty out, it’s the idea of being stuck out there and/or suffering the cold and grizzly death that is getting sucked out into space does. So he does everything in his power to ensure that never happens. Out of all the supporting characters, the events of the episode that sparked this post aside, Scotty seems to have the best handle on his fear, the most condemning evidence that he’s got Astrophobia occurs later in season 3. He freezes up in the Jeffrey’s Tube during delicate work in That Which Survives. As well as telling his love interest that being bone deep afraid that you’re going to die in the cold vacuum of space is a perfectly normal thing to constantly think about in Lights of Zetar. Still, he is uncommonly steely-eyed and level headed whenever he has the con, even in the face of his fear. I used to theorize that maybe he was afraid of failure/imperfection, but Scotty’s Jerry-Rigs and Duct-tape way of doing things doesn’t lend itself to that idea. What stuck out to me was his comment “we’ll all be lost, forever lost!” in And The Children Shall Lead that made me think Astrophobia would be a good fit.

Nyota Uhura-Nosophobia

Nosophobia: Fear of contracting deadly disease

Uhura’s fear seems to be dying a slow and painful death by disease, one where she is irrevocably physically/mentally altered by her suffering. There’s evidence for this when she sees the appeal of immortality in I, Mudd, and that she’s scared she’ll end up like Chekov in The Tholian Web. Nosophobia is not hypochondria (convincing yourself that you have a disease/compulsively self-diagnosing) or germaphobia (extreme fear of germs and sickness). Nosophobia is more long term, an irrational fear of things like cancer and Alzheimer’s and other such conditions as well as potentially deadly viruses. It seems to me that if Uhura were to die she’d rather it be quick and painless rather than endure that sort of battle.

Hikaru Sulu-Cleithrophobia

Cleithrophobia: Fear of being trapped

Again, someone I thought maybe was afraid of failure (afraid of failing by destroying the ship with the swords in ATCSL) before I picked up on a very interesting pattern I noticed from The Corbomite Maneuver. Sulu gets really fatalistic and/or agitated when it seems like he’s trapped with no way out. He hyper fixates on the countdown when their trapped and condemned to destruction by Balok in The Corbomite Maneuver, he makes dark jokes while trapped and freezing to death on the planet from The Enemy Within. He seizes up instead of fleeing or fighting the Law Givers in Return if The Archons, and even panics a little when they’re trapped by the giant hand in Who Mourns For Adonais (and usually Sulu is insanely chill under pressure). Cleithrophobia gets confused with Claustrophobia often, but Celthrophobia has much more emphasis on the trapped and no way out elements than just enclosed spaces. So him being terrified by being unable to move because it’s surrounded by swords actually makes a lot of sense! Honestly, I find it uniquely fitting that a flyboy with an enthusiasm for growing things would be agitated by places that do not allow growth or flight.

Pavel Chekov-Proditophobia (in reverse)

Proditophobia: Fear of betrayal

Proditophobia is the fear of being betrayed, but there is more evidence to suggest that Pavel is waaaaay more terrified of betraying or being disloyal rather than being the victim of that action. There’s certainly evidence for it in both The Trouble with Tribbles and Day of The Dove, where he is driven to act out violently on the behalf of those he feels deep loyalty towards, in his head, allowing someone else’s reputation to be trashed counts as disloyalty. And The Children Shall Lead also shows us, at least at this point in Chekov’s character development, he feels more loyalty to Starfleet than the Enterprise crew (something that certainly changes/evolves by the time the movies roll around). The case might even have been that he was all bark and no bite and really wasn’t actually going to kill his Captain or mentor, he was just hoping they’d believe him so that they’d go peacefully and he wouldn’t have to worry about betraying Starfleet at all. I used to think maybe he feared punishment or retribution, but he’d never break any rules if that were the case, and if I know anything about this feral gremlin of an Ensign, he’ll do that in a split second if someone questions his loyalty.

Chapter 6

Hey, Dad. I caught you.” I adjusted my grip on the phone receiver and pulled up a stool at the breakfast bar. I missed my father. For the last four years we’d lived close enough to see each other at least once a week. Now his home in Oceanside was the entire country away. “How are you?”

He lowered the volume on the television. “Better, now that you’ve called. How was your first week at work?”

I went over my days from Monday through Friday, skipping over all the Lauren parts. “I really like my boss, Mark,” I finished. “And the vibe of the agency is very energetic and kind of quirky. I’m happy going to work every day, and I’m bummed when it’s time to go home.”

“I hope it stays that way. But you need to make sure you have some downtime, too. Go out, be young, have fun. But not too much fun.”

“Yeah, I had a little too much last night. Cary and I went clubbing, and I woke up with a mean hangover.”

“Shit, don’t tell me that.” He groaned. “Some nights I wake up in a cold sweat thinking about you in New York. I get through it by telling myself you’re too smart to take chances, thanks to two parents who’ve drilled safety rules into your DNA.”

“Which is true,” I said, laughing. “That reminds me…I’m going to start Krav Maga training.”

“Really?” There was a thoughtful pause. “One of the guys on the force is big on it. Maybe I’ll check it out and we can compare notes when I come out to visit you.”

“You’re coming to New York?” I couldn’t hide my excitement. “Oh, Dad, I’d love it if you would. As much as I miss SoCal, Manhattan is really awesome. I think you’ll like it.”

“I’d like anyplace in the world as long as you’re there.” He waited a beat, then asked, “How’s your mom?”

“Well…she’s Mom. Beautiful, charming, and obsessive-compulsive.”

My chest hurt and I rubbed at it. I thought my dad might still love my mom. He’d never married. That was one of the reasons I never told him about what happened to me. As a cop, he would’ve insisted on pressing charges and the scandal would have destroyed my mother. I also worried that he’d lose respect for her or even blame her, and it hadn’t been her fault. As soon as she’d found out what her stepson was doing to me, she’d left a husband she was happy with and filed for divorce.

I kept talking, waving at Cary as he came rushing in with a little blue Tiffany & Co. bag. “We had a spa day today. It was a fun way to cap off the week.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “I’m glad you two are managing to spend time together. What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?”

I hedged on the subject of the charity event, knowing the whole red carpet business and astronomically-priced dinner seats would just highlight the gap between my parents’ lives. “Cary and I are going out to eat, and then I plan on staying in tomorrow. Sleeping in late, hanging out in my pajamas all day, maybe some movies and food delivery of some sort. A little vegetating before a new work week kicks off.”

“Sounds like heaven to me. I may copy you when my next day off rolls around.”

Glancing at the clock, I saw it was creeping past six. “I have to get ready now. Be careful at work, okay? I worry about you, too.”

“Will do. Bye, baby.”

The familiar sign-off had me missing him so much my throat hurt. “Oh, wait! I’m getting a new cell phone. I’ll text you the number as soon as I have it.”

“Again? You just got a new one when you moved.”

“Long, boring story.”

“Hmm…Don’t put it off. They’re good for safety as well as playing Angry Birds.”

“I’m over that game!” I laughed and warmth spread through me to hear him laughing, too. “I’ll call you in a few days. Be good.”

“That’s my line.”

We hung up. I sat for a few moments in the ensuing silence, feeling like everything was right in my world, which never lasted long. I brooded on that for minute; then Cary cranked up Hinder on his bedroom stereo and that kicked my butt into gear.

I hurried to my room to get ready for a night with Lauren.

“Necklace or no necklace?” I asked Cary, when he came into my bedroom looking seriously amazing. Dressed in his new Brioni tux, he was both debonair and dashing, and certain to attract attention.

“Hmm.” His head tilted to the side as he studied me. “Hold it up again.”

I lifted the choker of gold coins to my throat. The dress my mom had sent was fire engine red and styled for a Grecian goddess. It hung on one shoulder, cut diagonally across my cleavage, had ruching to the hip, and then split at my right upper thigh all the way down my leg. There was no back to speak of, aside from a slender strip of rhinestones that connected one side to the other to keep the front from falling off. Otherwise, the back was bared to just above the crack of my buttocks in a racy V-cut.

“Forget the necklace,” he said. “I was leaning toward gold chandeliers, but now I’m thinking diamond hoops. The biggest ones you’ve got.”

“What? Really?” I frowned at our reflections in my cheval mirror, watching as he moved to my jewelry box and dug through it.

“These.” He brought them to me and I eyed the two-inch hoops my mother had given me for my eighteenth birthday. “Trust me, Camila. Try ’em on.”

I did and found he was right. It was a very different look from the gold choker, less glam and more edgy sensuality. And the earrings went well with the diamond anklet on my right leg that I’d never think of the same way again after Lauren’s comment. With my hair swept off my face into a cascade of thick, deliberately messy curls, I had a just-screwed look that was complemented by smoky eye shadow and glossy nude lips.

“What would I do without you, Cary Taylor?”

“Baby girl”—he set his hands on my shoulders and pressed his cheek to mine—“you’ll never find out.”

“You look awesome, by the way.”

“Don’t I?” He winked and stepped back, showing off.

In his own way, Cary could give Lauren a run for her money…er, looks. Cary was more finely featured, almost pretty compared to Lauren’s savage beauty, but both were striking people that made you look twice, and then stare in greedy delight.

Cary hadn’t been quite so perfect when I met him. He’d been strung out and gaunt, his emerald eyes cloudy and lost. But I’d been drawn to him, going out of my way to sit next to him in group therapy. He’d finally propositioned me crudely, having come to believe the only reason people associated with him was because they wanted to fuck him. It was when I declined, firmly and irrevocably, that we finally connected and became best friends. He was the brother I’d never had.

The intercom buzzed and I jumped, making me realize how nervous I was. I looked at Cary. “I forgot to tell the front desk she was coming back.”

“I’ll get her.”

“Are you going to be okay riding over with Stanton and my mom?”

“Are you kidding? They love me.” His smile dimmed. “Having second thoughts about going with Jauregui?”

I took a deep breath, remembering where I’d been earlier—on my back in a multi-orgasmic daze. “Not really, no. It’s just that everything’s happening so fast and going better than I expected or realized I wanted…”

“You’re wondering what the catch is.” Reaching out, he tapped my nose with his fingertip. “she’s the catch, Camila. And you landed her. Enjoy yourself.”

“I’m trying.” I was grateful that Cary understood me and the way my mind worked. It was just so easy being with him, knowing he could fill in the blanks when I couldn’t explain something.

“I researched the hell out of her this morning and printed out the interesting recent stuff. It’s on your desk, if you decide you want to check it out.”

I remembered him printing something before we got ready for the spa. Pushing onto my tiptoes, I kissed his cheek. “You’re the best. I love you.”

“Back atcha, baby girl.” He headed out. “I’ll head down to the front desk and bring her up. Take your time. she’s ten minutes early.”

Smiling, I watched him saunter into the hallway. The door had closed behind him when I moved into the small sitting room attached to my bedroom. On the very impractical escritoire my mother had picked out, I found a folder filled with articles and printed images. I settled into the chair and got lost in Lauren Jauregui's history.

It was like watching a train wreck to read that she was the Daughter of Geoffrey Jauregui, former chairman of an investment securities firm later found to be a front for a massive Ponzi scheme. Lauren was just five years old when her dad committed suicide with a gunshot to the head rather than face prison time.

Oh, Lauren. I tried to picture her that young and imagined a handsome dark-haired girl with beautiful green eyes filled with terrible confusion and sadness. The image broke my heart. How devastating her father’s suicide—and the circumstances around it—must have been, for both her and her mother. The stress and strain at such a difficult time would’ve been enormous, especially for a child of that age.

Her mother went on to marry Christopher Vidal, a music executive, and had two more children, Christopher Vidal Jr. and Ireland Vidal, but it seemed a larger family and financial security had come too late to help Lauren stabilize after such a huge shakeup. she was too closed off not to bear some painful emotional scars.

With a critical and curious eye, I studied the women who’d been photographed with Lauren and thought about her approach to dating, socializing, and sex. I saw that my mom had been right—they were all blondes. The woman who appeared with her most often bore the hallmarks of a KaKasian heritage. she was taller than me, willowy rather than curvy.

“Magdalene Perez,” I murmured, grudgingly admitting that she was a stunner. Her posture had the kind of flamboyant confidence that I admired.

“Okay, it’s been long enough,” Cary interrupted with a soft note of amusement. He filled the doorway to my sitting room, leaning insolently into the doorjamb.

“Really?” I’d been so absorbed; I hadn’t realized how much time had passed.

“I would guess you’re about a minute away from her coming to find you. she’s barely restraining herself.”

I shut the folder and stood.

“Interesting reading, isn’t it?”

“Very.” How had lauren’s father—or more specifically, her father’s suicide—influenced her life?

I knew all the answers I wanted were waiting for me in the next room.

Leaving my bedroom, I took the hallway to the living room. I paused on the threshold, my gaze riveted to lauren’s back as she stood in front of the windows and looked out at the city. My heart rate kicked up. Her reflection revealed a contemplative mood. Her gaze was unfocused and her mouth grim. Her crossed arms betrayed an inherent unease, as if she was out of her element. she looked remote and removed, a woman who was inherently alone.

she sensed my presence or maybe he felt my yearning. she pivoted; then went very still. I took the opportunity to drink her in, my gaze sliding all over her. she looked every inch the powerful magnate. So sensually handsome my eyes burned just from looking at her. The rakish fall of black hair around her face made my fingers flex with the urge to touch it. And the way she looked at me…my pulse leaped.

“Camila.” she came toward me, her stride graceful and strong. she caught up my hand and lifted it to her mouth. Her gaze was intense—intensely hot, intensely focused.

The feel of her lips against my skin sent goose bumps racing up my arm and stirred memories of that sinful mouth on other parts of my body. I was instantly aroused. “Hi.”

Amusement warmed her eyes. “Hi, yourself. You look amazing. I can’t wait to show you off.”

I breathed through the delight I felt at the compliment. “Let’s hope I can do you justice.”

A slight frown knit the space between her brows. “Do you have everything you need?”

Cary appeared beside me, carrying my black velvet shawl and opera length gloves. “Here you go. I tucked your gloss into your clutch.”

“You’re the best, Cary.”

He winked at me—which told me he’d seen the condoms I had tucked into the small interior pocket. “I’ll head down with you two.”

Lauren took the shawl from Cary and draped it over my shoulders. she pulled my hair out from underneath it and the feel of her hands at my neck so distracted me, I barely paid attention when Cary pushed my gloves into my hands.

The elevator ride to the lobby was an exercise in surviving acute sexual tension. Not that Cary seemed to notice. He was on my left with both hands in his pockets, whistling. Lauren, on the other hand, was a tremendous force on the other side of me. Although ahe didn’t move or make a sound, I could feel the edgy energy radiating from her. My skin tingled from the magnetic pull between us, and my breath came short and fast. I was relieved when the doors opened and freed us from the enclosed space.

Two women stood waiting to get on. Their jaws dropped when they saw Lauren and Cary, and that lightened my mood and made me smile.

“Ladies,” Cary greeted them, with a smile that really wasn’t fair. I could almost see their brain cells misfiring.

In contrast, Lauren gave a curt nod and led me out with a hand at the small of my back, skin to skin. The contact was electric, sending heat pouring through me.

I squeezed Cary’s hand. “Save a dance for me.”

“Always. See you in a bit.”

A limousine was waiting at the curb, and the driver opened the door when Lauren and I stepped outside. I slid across the bench seat to the opposite side and adjusted my gown. When Lauren settled beside me and the door shut, I became highly conscious of how good she smelled. I breathed her in, telling myself to relax and enjoy her company. she took my hand and ran her fingertips over the palm, the simple touch sparking a fierce lust. I shrugged off my shawl, feeling too hot to wear it.

“Camila.” she hit a button and the privacy glass behind the driver began to slide up. The next moment I was tugged across her lap and her mouth was on mine, kissing me fiercely.

I did what I’d wanted to do since I saw hee in my living room: I shoved my hands in her hair and kissed her back. I loved the way she kissed me, as if she had to, as if she’d go crazy if she didn’t and had nearly waited too long. I sucked on her tongue, having learned how much she liked it, having learned how much I liked it, how much it made me want to suck her elsewhere with the same eagerness.

Her hands were sliding over my bare back and I moaned, feeling the prod of her erection against my hip. I shifted, moving to straddle her, shoving the skirt of my gown out of the way and making a mental note to thank my mom for the dress—which had such a convenient slit. With my knees on either side of her hips, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and deepened the kiss. I licked into her mouth, nibbled on her lower lip, stroked my tongue along her…

Lauren gripped my waist and pushed me away. she leaned into the seat back, her neck arched to look up at my face, her chest heaving. “What are you doing to me?”

I ran my hands down her chest through her dress shirt, feeling the unforgiving hardness of her muscles. My fingers traced the ridges of her abdomen, my mind forming a picture of how she might look naked. “I’m touching you. Enjoying the hell out of you. I want you, Lauren.”

she caught my wrists, stilling my movements. “Later. We’re in the middle of Manhattan.”

“No one can see us.”

“That’s not the point. It’s not the time or place to start something we can’t finish for hours. I’m losing my mind already from this afternoon.”

“So let’s make sure we finish it now.”

Her grip tightened painfully. “We can’t do that here.”

“Why not?” Then a surprising thought struck me. “Haven’t you ever had sex in a limo?”

“No.” Her jaw hardened. “Have you?”

Looking away without answering, I saw the traffic and pedestrians surging around us. We were only inches away from hundreds of people, but the dark glass concealed us and made me feel reckless. I wanted to please her. I wanted to know I was capable of reaching into Lauren Jauregui, and there was nothing to stop me but her.

I rocked my hips against her, stroking myself with the hard length of her cock. Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth.

“I need you, Lauren,” I said breathlessly, inhaling her scent, which was richer now that she was aroused. I thought I might be slightly intoxicated, just from the enticing smell of her skin. “You drive me crazy.”

she released my wrists and cupped my face, her lips pressing hard against mine. I reached for the fly of her slacks, freeing the two buttons to access the concealed zipper. she tensed.

“I need this,” I whispered against her lips. “Give me this.”

she didn’t relax, but she made no further attempts to stop me either. When she fell heavily into my palms, she groaned, the sound both pained and erotic. I squeezed her gently, my touch deliberately tender as I sized her with my hands. she was so hard, like stone, and hot. I slid both of my fists up her length from root to tip, my breath catching when she quivered beneath me.

Lauren gripped my thighs, her hands sliding upward beneath the edges of my dress until her thumbs found the red lace of my thong. “Your cunt is so sweet,” she murmured into my mouth. “I want to spread you out and lick you ’til you beg for my cock.”

“I’ll beg now, if you want.” I stroked her with one hand and reached for my clutch with the other, snapping it open to grab a condom.

One of her thumbs slid beneath the edge of my panties, the pad sliding through the slickness of my desire. “I’ve barely touched you,” she whispered, her eyes glittering up at me in the shadows of the backseat, “and you’re ready for me.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I don’t want you to help it.” she pushed her thumb inside me, biting her lower lip when I clenched helplessly around her. “It wouldn’t be fair when I can’t stop what you do to me.”

I ripped the foil packet open with my teeth and held it out to her with the ring of the condom protruding from the tear. “I’m not good with these.”

Her hand curled around mine. “I’m breaking all my rules with you.”

The seriousness of her low tone sent a burst of warmth and confidence through me. “Rules are made to be broken.”

I saw her teeth flash white; then she hit a button on the panel beside him and said, “Drive until I say otherwise.”

My cheeks heated. Another car’s headlights pierced the dark tinted glass and slid over my face, betraying my embarrassment.

“Why, Camila,” she purred, rolling the condom on deftly. “You’ve seduced me into having sex in my limousine, but blush when I tell my driver I don’t want to be interrupted while you do it to me?”

Her sudden playfulness made me desperate to have her. Setting my hands on her shoulders for balance, I lifted onto my knees, rising to gain the height I needed to hover over the crown of Laurens thick cock. Her hands fisted at my hips and I heard a snap as she tore my panties away. The abrupt sound and the violent action behind it spurred my desire to a fever pitch.

“Go slow,” she ordered hoarsely, lifting her hips to push her pants down farther.

Her erection brushed between my legs as she moved and I whimpered, so aching and empty, as if the orgasms she’d given me earlier had only deepened my craving rather than appeased it.

she tensed when I wrapped my fingers around her and positioned her, tucking the wide crest against the saturated folds of my cleft. The scent of our lust was heavy and humid in the air, a seductive mix of need and pheromones that awakened every cell in my body. My skin was flushed and tingling, my breasts heavy and tender.

This is what I’d wanted from the moment I first saw her—to possess her, to climb up her magnificent body and take her deep inside me.

“God. Camila,” she gasped as I lowered onto her, her hands flexing restlessly on my thighs.

I closed my eyes, feeling too exposed. I’d wanted intimacy with her and yet this seemed too intimate. We were eye-to-eye, only inches apart, cocooned in a small space with the rest of the world streaming by around us. I could sense his agitation, knew she was feeling as off-center as I was.

“You’re so tight.” Her gasped words were threaded with a hint of delicious agony.

I took more of her, letting her slide deeper. I sucked in a deep breath, feeling exquisitely stretched. “You’re so big.”

Pressing her palm flat to my lower belly, she touched my throbbing clit with the pad of her thumb and began to massage it in slow, expertly soft circles. Everything in my core tightened and clenched, sucking her deeper. Opening my eyes, I looked at her from under heavy eyelids. she was so beautiful sprawled beneath me in her elegant tuxedo, her powerful body straining with the primal need to mate.

Her neck arched, her head pressing hard into the seatback as if she was struggling against invisible bonds. “Ah, Christ,” she bit out, her teeth grinding. “I’m going to come so hard.”

The dark promise excited me. Sweat misted my skin. I became so wet and hot that I slid smoothly down the length of her cock until I’d nearly sheathed her. A breathless cry escaped me before I’d taken her to the root. she was so deep I could hardly stand it, forcing me to shift from side to side, trying to ease the unexpected bite of discomfort. But my body didn’t seem to care that she was too big. It was rippling around her, squeezing, trembling on the verge of orgasm.

Lauren cursed and gripped my hip with her free hand, urging me to lean backward as her chest heaved with frantic breaths. The position altered my descent and I opened, accepting all of her. Immediately her body temperature rose, her torso radiating sultry heat through her clothes. Sweat dotted her upper lip.

Leaning forward, I slid my tongue along the sculpted curve, collecting the saltiness with a low murmur of delight. Her hips churned impatiently. I lifted carefully, sliding up a few inches before she stopped me with that ferocious grasp on my hip.

“Slow,” she warned again, with an authoritative bite that sent lust pulsing through me.

I lowered, taking her into me again, feeling an oddly luscious soreness as she pushed just past my limits. Our eyes locked on each other as the pleasure spread from the place where we connected. It struck me then that we were both fully clothed except for the most private and intimate parts of our bodies. I found that excruciatingly carnal, as were the sounds she made, as if the pleasure was as extreme for her as it was for me.

Wild for her, I pressed my mouth to her, my fingers gripping the sweat-damp roots of her hair. I kissed her as I rocked my hips, riding the maddening circling of her thumb, feeling the orgasm building with every slide of her long, thick penis into my melting core.

I lost my mind somewhere along the way, primitive instinct taking over until my body was completely in charge. I could focus on nothing but the driving urge to fuck, the ferocious need to ride her cock until the tension burst and set me free of this grinding hunger.

“It’s so good,” I sobbed, lost to her. “You feel…Ah, God, it’s too good.”

Using both hands, Lauren commanded my rhythm, tilting me into an angle that had the big crown of her cock rubbing a tender, aching spot inside me. As I tightened and shook, I realized I was going to come from that, just from the expert thrust of her inside me. “Lauren.”

she captured me by the nape as the orgasm exploded through me, starting with the ecstatic spasms of my core and radiating outward until I was trembling all over. she watched me fall apart, holding my gaze when I would’ve closed my eyes. Possessed by her stare, I moaned and came harder than I ever had, my body jerking with every pulse of pleasure.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she growled, pounding her hips up at me, yanking my hips down to meet her punishing lunges. she hit the end of me with every deep thrust, battering into me. I could feel her growing harder and thicker.

I watched her avidly, needing to see it when she went over the edge for me. Her eyes were wild with her need, losing their focus as her control frayed, her gorgeous face ravaged by the brutal race to climax.

“Camila!” she came with an animal sound of feral ecstasy, a snarling release that riveted me with its ferocity. she shook as the orgasm tore into her, her features softening for an instant with an unexpected vulnerability.

Cupping her face, I brushed my lips across her, comforting her as the forceful bursts of her gasping breaths struck my cheeks.

“Camila.” she wrapped her arms around me and crushed me to her, pressing her damp face into the curve of my neck.

I knew just how she felt. Stripped. Laid bare.

We stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, absorbing the aftershocks. she turned her head and kissed me softly, the strokes of her tongue into my mouth soothing my ragged emotions.

“Wow,” I breathed, shaken.

Her mouth twitched. “Yeah.”

I smiled, feeling dazed and high.

Lauren brushed the damp tendrils of hair off my temples, her fingertips gliding almost reverently across my face. The way she studied me made my chest hurt. she looked stunned and…grateful, her eyes warm and tender. “I don’t want to break this moment.”

Because I could hear it hanging in the air, I filled it in. “But…?”

“But I can’t blow off this dinner. I have a speech to give.”

“Oh.” The moment was effectively broken.

I lifted gingerly off of her, biting my lip at the feel of her slipping wetly out of me. The friction was enough to make me want more. she’d barely softened.

“Damn it,” she said roughly. “I want you again.”

she caught me before I moved away, pulling a handkerchief out from somewhere and running it gently between my legs. It was a deeply intimate act, on par with the sex we’d just had.

When I was dry, I settled on the seat beside her and dug my lip gloss out of my clutch. I watched Lauren over the edge of my mirrored compact as she removed the condom and tied it off. she wrapped it in a cocktail napkin; then tossed it in a cleverly hidden trash receptacle. After restoring her appearance, she told the driver to head to our destination. Then she settled into the seat and stared out the window.

With every second that passed, I felt her withdrawing, the connection between us slipping further and further away. I found myself shrinking into the corner of the seat, away from her, mimicking the distance I felt building between us. All the warmth I’d felt receded into a marked chill, cooling me enough that I pulled my shawl around me again. she didn’t move a muscle as I shifted beside her and put my compact away, as if she wasn’t even aware I was there.

Abruptly, Lauren opened the bar and pulled out a bottle. Without looking at me, she asked, “Brandy?”

“No, thank you.” My voice was small, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t care. she poured a drink and tossed it back.

Confused and stung, I pulled on my gloves and tried to figure out what went wrong.

Can I just 💛💝💘

every day i lose 8 years of my life expectancy trying to come out with a spoiler because i’m lame and like to tell stories in their entirety.... but i will do this for u 

💛: what is the title based on?

i apologize in advance for what i’m about to say but it’s from the mamma mia song called the name of the game! i chose it because it has a very specific childishness to it that i feel like i wrote a lot about in this fic, at the same time that it’s a coy song about wondering if the person you’re developing feelings for feels the same way about you :^) there is also the innuendo with the word game and, you know, exy. here are some of the parts i consider parallel a lot with this fic:

I was an impossible case No one ever could reach me But I think I can see in your face There's a lot you can teach me

And you make me talk And you make me feel And you make me show What I'm trying to conceal

What's the name of the game? Does it mean anything to you?

but for the sake of curiosity, here are some of the names i’ve considered so far and might switch my mind to when it’s time to post the fic: 

kill your darlings

illicit affairs

andante, andante

language of averted eyes

💝: who has your favorite character arch? give a brief summary i KNOW it’s my god given duty to say kevin, but i actually want to say neil. i think it’s a common thing to gloss over neil’s flaws in canon, and while i suppose it depends on interpretation and whatnot, there is just something so irrevocably boring about the way people write him that motivated me to actually put in the work not to just understand neil, but to see him in his entirety. at the start of the fic, he’s entirely too dependent on the rest of the foxes to tell him who he is (much like he was with his mother), he clung to kevin because kevin gave him a purpose and neil wanted nothing more to have one, he lashed out on everything and everyone who made him even the slightest uncomfortable because that was both his flight and fight response, and he was at constant odds with himself and andrew/kevin because he didn’t know how to cope with his attachment to them. i also wrote a lot about his relationship with his mom: about the way sometimes he wishes she was still there to tell him what to do and who to be, about how much of a betrayal to her it feels to be happy still, about how alike they were.

at the end of the fic, i feel like he’s a lot better at working through his issues without lashing out or repressing them. it’s a hard process, of course, and lots of fights come from it, but i think he realizes, in the end, that no one is going to leave him as long as neil does not leave them, and that there is no reason to live on the defensive side now that mary is gone and he has to fend for himself. personally, it felt extremely cathartic to touch on these topics, and while writing neil’s pov was claustrophobic at best and downright annoying at worst, i think he’s a funky dude. could use some therapy tho.

💘: give us a huge spoiler

Kevin, from the passenger seat, drenched in moonlight, presses his lips into a tight line. Very beautiful, but that’s not the point. “I don’t understand you,” he confesses, at last. This is the longest grocery store run of Neil’s life. They hadn’t even gotten out of the parking long yet. “I don’t understand anything about you. You—” Kevin huffs frustratedly, “you don’t like me.”

That’s a way to put it, Neil thinks. “I do.”

He ignores it, averting his eyes to the window. There is nothing interesting there to see —  just cars, charmingly unrecognizable, but still just cars —  but Kevin doesn’t seem to mind it so much as long as it’s not Neil. “Then why can’t we be friends, Neil?” he asks, his voice so distant Neil almost deems it a rhetorical question; a wonder made-aloud. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand—  us. When it’s good, it’s so good, but when it’s bad, it’s so bad.” Kevin’s shoulders fall. “I don’t like fighting with you,” he ultimately decides, “but I just can’t apologize. I can’t apologize like you did.”

“I understand,” Neil replies, forcing his eyes to meet the lamp post just in front of the Maserati to keep himself from compulsively staring at Kevin’s face. How ridiculous is their situation —  looking everywhere but at each other, blowing air into the night to avoid blowing up their relationship, worn out like a party dress. These stupid feelings of his for Kevin will be the death star of their entire planet: something will choose to grow or rot from it, but everything else will be extincted nonetheless. Tentatively, Neil asks, “Do you think we’re bad at being friends?”

“Yes,” Kevin immediately answers. 

I don’t want to just be your friend, he thinks. Neil files that out for later. “How would we be if we were good at it?” he prompts, “Like you and Andrew?”

Kevin does something that’s half a scoff and half a huff —  it’s scornful regardless. “I don’t think I’m friends with the two of you,” Kevin admits, eventually. He looks small, at sudden. “I don’t know if we ever were. Neither of you know how to be friends with me.” He fidgets with the door handle for a second. “I don’t understand why.”

There is an edge to the voice —  something charged, something that implies an Am I the problem? that Neil absolutely hates. “It’s not your fault,” he murmurs, biting down on his own tongue. You did this; he is violently reminded. It’s not what Neil meant, of course, but he ultimately decides that his intentions failed him. “I think we’re just… Bad, in general.” Neil presses his lips together in thought. “But I won’t leave unless you tell me to. It’s not over until you tell me it is.”

At that, Kevin turns to him abruptly, blinking in surprise as if he hadn’t even considered the idea of a life without Neil in it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies, almost stern. “I said get out of my house, not get out of my life.”

“Semantics.”

“Not semantics,” Kevin disagrees. “I don’t want you out of my life.” 

“Kevin,” Neil finds himself almost pleading, “I don’t want to be bad to you.”

Fruits Basket 3x05

This episode didn’t get me crying like last week’s, but it was close.

Kisa saying hello to Kyo! Hiro is so proud!

Hiro recognizing his compulsion to be combative and course-correcting himself. Comes with the added bonus of irritating Kyo anyway.

Momiji  T_T

Nice bait and switch there. All the reaction videos from last week were hypothesizing that Haru was going to break the curse, but NO. Momiji’s breaks next!

The emphasis on the relationship between Momiji and Kyo: impeccable. These two have always been able to talk to each other in a way they can’t really talk with the others, which I find so fascinating. Momiji’s curse is broken, and the person he almost tells is Kyo, which...just says so much, I think. Although there’s a bit of anger there as well. Momiji clearly is in love with Tohru, but he also knows that he is neither the one she wants nor the one that would make her the most happy. So here is Kyo, who has Tohru’s affections and clearly reciprocates, but holds himself back for whatever reason that’s just so, so frustrating for Momiji, especially now; like Kyo is squandering something that Momiji wants so badly for himself.

Momiji doing what Kureno should have: drawing a boundary.

“I’ve become so free, and so lonely.” Haru can tell that something’s different. If Momiji went around the others, they’d probably be able to tell, too. He doesn’t really “belong” with them anymore. Maybe they were in chains, but they were in chains together, and that’s gone. He’s changed, irrevocably.

But he also has the wisdom to understand that just because he’s lonely now, doesn’t mean he’ll be lonely forever. 

“What about you? How long will you stay here?” Echoing Shigure’s question from earlier in the episode. Akito relies on the system as it is because it’s all she’s ever known: there are no certainties in a world without it. Freedom, true freedom, isn’t comfortable, it’s terrifying and lonely- but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Manga spoilers:

It’s curious that they moved this to before Shigure talks with Rin about his theory about the curse. With the manga, the reader already has this idea in their head that the curse is on its way out and it’s only a matter of time before everyone else joins Kureno in horrible, terrifying freedom, so the pacing here really emphasizes on the shock value of the moment. (I also note someone else’s note that moving this up places some space between Momiji’s curse breaking and Hiro’s.)

It really feels like they’re putting off Kyoko’s backstory so it’ll play as more “pay-off” to a lot of set-up. I imagine we’ll get Tohru’s realization of her true feelings and intentions, coupled with the promise she made to herself, before we get the context of Kyoko neglecting and then briefly abandoning her.

Side-note: I love how Takaya-sensei uses the imagery of hugging in this series. Usually kissing is the more dramatic device in romance, the big emotional release, but here the big moments revolve around hugs.

NEW FIC!!!

Written for the Carry On Quarantine event organized by @xivz​ for the prompt of food delivery. My thanks to @fight-surrender​ and @basic-banshee​ for the beta reads and support!!

Baz is a teacher quarantined at home and Simon is doing temp work delivering food for The Girl and the Goat, a local pub. A craving for a burger leads to Baz ordering from the pub, followed by weeks of mutual pining, the slow burn of a developing relationship thwarted by the physical constraints of social distancing, and a refrigerator full of pub food. Movie nights, exasperated friends, lots of texts, way too much food, and multiple awkward encounters. 

Let My Love Open the Door

Baz

I close my laptop and drop my head down onto it. I’m knackered. The metal feels cool against my forehead. I roll my face from side to side, relishing the smooth chill of it against my cheeks. And then I remember.

Fuck, now I have to disinfect the damn thing.

I’m done. Done for the day but also so done with this.

How can I be expected to effectively teach students—Sixth Form students at that—from a computer terminal? I’m almost three weeks into this, but their looming A Levels and GSCE’s are still on schedule for May.

That’s less than two months away. Five weeks and three days, to be exact.

Thank fuck it’s Friday. I’ll at least have two days to prepare next week’s frightfully inadequate lesson plan.

I grab a disinfecting wipe from the canister and methodically wipe down my laptop. I’m not sick—not a cough, not a sniffle—but I’ve bought into this not touching my face directive and I shouldn’t be smearing my germs on random surfaces. For all I know I could be carrying this thing. One of the asymptomatic Typhoid Marys, spreading it far and wide.

Not that there’s anyone to spread it to, seeing as I’m on my own here, but I wipe the laptop down anyway, unnerved by the whole idea of it.

I’ve washed my hands more in the past month than I have in my entire life. I spent the first day at home wiping down every surface, laundering the bedding, mopping the floors. My house went from having a pleasant, woodsy scent to the overwhelming stench of bleach instead.

It gave me such a headache that I had to open the windows and damn near froze. Bloody coldest March we’ve had in years. April’s not proving to be much better.

My mobile buzzes. I should have left it in the bedroom but I’ve become painfully attached to it.

If I’m not planning out curriculum, video conferencing with my class, answering frantic emails from parents, students, the other teachers at my school, or compulsively cleaning and reorganizing my house, then I’m moodily scrolling through Twitter and Instagram and ratcheting up my anxiety.

I should delete my social media.

My mobile buzzes again.

I glance at my watch. It’s six o’clock.

Bound to be Wellbelove.

Wellbelove: are you done yet?

Wellbelove: Baz!!

Wellbelove: you can’t still be doing classwork it’s after 5

Wellbelove: BAAAAZZZZ

Me: Give it a rest, Wellbelove. Some of us are actually working from home.

Wellbelove: I am working, you poncy bastard I’m obviously far more efficient than you.

Me: Look, some of us can’t just post our morning exercise routine and somehow have that count as work.

Wellbelove: Why are we friends again? Can you remind me why I put up with this slander from you?

Me: Because of my sparkling wit and undeniable charm.

Wellbelove: more like your fashion sense and propensity to pick up the bill when we eat out. Neither of which are in evidence at the moment so I may have to rethink my devotion to you

Me: Still, I’m indispensable.

Wellbelove: then buy me dinner. what are we watching tonight?

This all started at the end of that first week, when Agatha couldn’t concentrate on the book she was trying to read and I’d reached the pulling-my-hair-out state of lesson planning. She suggested we watch a film together—FaceTiming while our Netflix accounts played in sync.

We’ve done that almost every night since. Dinner and a movie, separately, from a distance.

We spend almost as much time arguing over what to watch as we do watching, but that’s just how we are. I’ve known Agatha Wellbelove since we were toddlers at the same crèche when our parents were at uni. Same primary school, same secondary school.

We drifted apart during our uni years, with Agatha at Brighton for phys Ed and Oxford to read for English Language and Literature for me.  

It was some bizarre twist of fate that we were both hired to teach at the same secondary school in Chilham. She was the last person I expected to see on my orientation day.

We picked up where we left off, latching onto each other as we navigated our first real world experience after uni.

It’s been three years now and I think the past three weeks have been the longest stretch we’ve gone without seeing each other since we moved here.

She’s self-centered, brutally straight-forward, horribly short-tempered, dreadfully impatient, and devastatingly gorgeous.

A perfect match for me if I wasn’t so irrevocably gay.

And if she wasn’t . . . well, categorically uninterested in me in that way is probably the best way to phrase it.

But she’s my best friend and I know it hasn’t been all that long but fuck, I miss her.

Wellbelove: WHAT ARE WE WATCHING BAZ ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION

She’d be kicking me in the shin by now, if she were here. Maybe I don’t miss her quite that much.

Ugh, it’s my night to choose. I don’t know what I want to watch. Something soothing, not one of those action films or plucky sports dramas she likes so much. I actually like Bend it Like Beckham but not those sappy American ones she’s inflicted on me.

I need something familiar. Comforting.

Me: Pride and Prejudice.

Wellbelove: 2005. Kiera Knightley. I will accept no substitutes.

Me: The 1995 version is superior.

Wellbelove: Colin Firth doesn’t look like that anymore Baz. Let it go.

I start to type “Keira Knightley doesn’t either” but fucking hell she does still look the same.

Wellbelove: and you owe me dinner

Me: 2005 AND dinner? You are greedy and demanding, Wellbelove. I’ll agree to Knightley. Make your own dinner.

Wellbelove: I want a burger I’m ordering out since you’re being a berk and won’t send me food

Fuck. I’m craving a burger now too.

I don’t even want to think about cooking anything. I’m so sick of pasta, even though I’ve tried to make it a different way each time, with my dwindling pantry supplies. And much as I love the curry place down the road I can’t eat it every day.

I used to think I could. I used to say I’d be happy eating tikka masala every day for the rest of my life, but I was mistaken.

And no more chippies. I can’t do another chippy.

Me: Who’s delivering burgers? Please tell me you aren’t getting McDonald’s.

Wellbelove: why would I get McDonald’s when I can get a lamb burger from The Girl and The Goat?

Me: they’re not still open?

Wellbelove: of course they’re still open you stupid git.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to check. Why I assumed the pubs would close down, when they all have kitchens and food service, just like the chippies and fast food places.

Me: why didn’t you bother telling me, you hag?

Wellbelove: You are a grown man Hunter gatherer type you should be able to forage for your own food

I want one of those burgers. We don’t go there all that often but The Girl and The Goat has some of the best burgers in town. Fucking hell, I’m salivating at the thought of it.

Me: Text when you’ve got dinner and we’ll start the movie

Wellbelove: you’re ordering from The Goat aren’t you you hypocrite and not even paying for mine

I close the messenger app to look up The Girl and The Goat online. I scan the menu and then ring them up.

The warm, cheerful voice on the line assures me the order will be delivered to my door within a half hour. I give my mobile number so the driver can text when he arrives.

“Just be looking for the text, love,” the woman’s warm voice continues. “Simon will leave everything at your door, no need to open up until he’s gone. I know how wary people are these days so we’re trying to make it easy.”

A little over a half hour later my mobile buzzes with a message from an unknown number.

Unknown number: Food’s here!

Unknown number: I’ll ring when it’s on your doorstep

The doorbell chimes and I peek at the doorway video display only to startle at the huge grinning face looming on the screen. I push the audio button.

“Yes?”

“Hullo! I’m Simon. I’ve got your order from The Goat. Lamb burger and chips.” He holds up a gloved hand carrying a bag. “I’ll just leave it right here for you.” I get a brief glimpse of a broad back clad in a brown leather jacket as he bends down, before he’s back to grinning at the camera again. “Thanks for ordering from The Goat. We appreciate the business. If you text me back you’ll get a discount for next time!”

“Text you back what?”

He leans in closer and shrugs. “Whatever.”

He’s got brilliant blue eyes. A scattering of freckles dotted across his face.

“Um, right, ok then. Thanks.”

He waves and then he’s out of sight again.

I move to the front window and twitch aside the blinds to watch him get in a blue car with “The Girl and The Goat” displayed across the door in white lettering.

I wait until the car is long gone before opening the door, gloves on, carrying the parcel of food as if it’s radioactive until I reach the kitchen, where I can dispose of the bag and transfer the food to my own dishes.

It’s likely overkill, I know, but I find being wary and methodical helps calm me.

I settle down in front of the television with my meal and my mobile, ready to message Agatha, when I see the text from the unknown number again.

I’d not say no to a discount. I click on it to text back. What exactly does one text to an attractive delivery man?

I shake my head. He’s just the delivery man, it’s irrelevant if he’s attractive or not.

My finger is still hovering over my mobile. I’m having an existential crisis over what to text a delivery man so I can get a discount on a pub meal. These are the depths that I have sunk to with this self-quarantine.

It would help if he were ordinary looking. It really would.

Me to unknown number: Whatever

I hit send before I think too hard about how unoriginal and trite a response that was.

My mobile pings back a moment later.

Unknown number: 15% percent off the next order. Just say Simon said when you call it in! :)

Read the rest at ao3!!!!!!!!!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23590015

and i will always love you - chapter four

Fic Summary:

“He feels sorry for her. It’s hard not to. Except it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still the child of an eminent politician, using her wealth and status to arm herself in ways that others in her situation couldn’t. Fitz has protected all kinds of people who’ve done the same thing, and every last one has been a complete and utter wanker.”

When an accidental discovery causes nationwide outrage at Dr. Jemma Simmons, Protection Officer Leopold Fitz is the one called upon to be her bodyguard. It starts off as one thing and ends quite another. A bodyguard au.

Chapter Summary:

A long dark night that ends with a beautiful sunrise.

Fitz struggles with his ever-growing feelings, a little bit more of the past is revealed, and unplanned co-habitation goes a step further.

{Read Chapter 4 Here}

{Read from the beginning here}

or read ch 4 below!

With HQ satisfied that the immediate threat is gone now that Jemma’s moved into a hotel, a suggestion is made that Fitz should take his days off. A suggestion that comes in the form of narrowed eyes, angry eyebrows, and the introduction of Officer Davis.

With no choice otherwise, and secure in the knowledge that his superior wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Jemma while he wasn’t there, Fitz makes a feeble effort to go back to his life pre-Jemma Simmons. It includes waking up in the afternoon, having leftover pizza for breakfast and playing video games with Hunter until he either leaves for work or for Bobbi, and then Fitz goes back to sleep.

Or that’s the way it used to be, back when life was much simpler. Now there are all these things in his head, things that one might call feelings. Feelings that are most definitely about Jemma.

The war between his ever -growing feelings for Jemma and for the desire to protect her and do his job as well as he can rages in his already suffering head. It consumes him. He can’t sleep at night for thinking of all the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘maybes’. The days off aren’t enjoyable anymore, they’re just monotonous. There’s nothing to distract him. Even Hunter’s not here; he’s made up with Bobbi and they’ve been playing catch up for those two days they weren’t talking ever since.

It’s a shame, really, because his best-friend being so in love makes Fitz want that, too, except he only wants it with somebody he cannot have. Nobody else he’s ever met has ever made him feel this way before. And he enjoys the daydreams and follows them as far as he dares, but it’s such a hard crash-land back into the real world when it’s all over.

Just over three years ago Fitz was in a car accident. A terrible, terrible car accident that robbed oxygen from his brain which, in turn, robbed him of the ability to do a lot of things he used to be quite good at. For months he could only speak in fragments of sentences, couldn’t draw a straight line and barely left his flat. He lost his job, his self esteem and really the only person he would speak to was Hunter.

He used to be an engineer and he used to draw schematics on napkins and post-it notes going spare. Now he’s a protection officer, a job that he got and kept because of Hunter. He used to stay up until the wee hours in the morning designing by desk lamp light. Now he gets headaches so badly he sees stars.

The point is that it’s been a long time since he’s had something worth actually living his life for. Or someone. And Jemma Simmons seems like someone worth living for. The problem is that there’s nothing that can be done about it, because he’s her protection officer and because she’s also someone worth dying for.

This isn’t as elegant as they make it out to be in all the books and all the movies. Love isn’t fulfilling and sustaining and joyous. Love, it seems, just sucks.

-x-

His jumbled-up thoughts do not leave him, and his brain feels like scrambled egg when he’s eventually allowed back to work. Nothing seems to help him and the constant headache behind his eyes makes him snap at everyone he comes across. He even snaps at Jemma, and while she says nothing, her reproachful look makes him wade further into his deep pit of misery to wallow.

It only gets worse at the end of the day. They pack up their things in silence, only communicating with a nod when they’re ready to leave. He feels Jemma’s questioning gaze on him on the drive back to the hotel, the searing heat of it burning his face. He manages to resist any compulsion to talk, and by the time they’re settled in their room they’ve barely spoken ten words to each other all day.

The room has a single bed and a double, and Jemma perches on the end of the double, a concerned look on her face as she follows his admittedly erratic movements about the room.

“Fitz,” she sighs eventually. “What is wrong with you?”

He ignores her, unable to answer, unwilling to. “We’ve only got the one room tonight, right?”

“Yes. We had to give up the other room. The hotel is fully booked for a conference for the next few days. This is the last room available.” She gives him a weak smile. “Lucky us.”

The hotel is a cheap one that people pay for because they need someplace to sleep or somewhere to hide scientists that are receiving death threats. It wouldn’t be his first choice for anything really, but his first flat with Hunter was worse so he summons his inner twenty-year old and resists screwing up his face in distaste. If he’s feeling like this, he can’t imagine how Jemma must be feeling.

Then he realisation hits him that he’s now facing a problem that Davis most certainly didn’t. He and Jemma are sleeping in the same room, in beds so close that someone could reach out and touch the other if they so desired. The cosmos must be well and truly against him.

“What bed are you wanting?” He asks, before realising that there are toiletries on the bedside table and a pair of pyjamas folded neatly on the pillow of the double bed.

“Oh, well I’ve been sleeping in this one,” Jemma looks down to where she’s perched, “but we can switch if you like? I don’t mind.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” He waves away her offer. “You’ve already been sleeping there; it would be a bit cruel of me to make you change.”

“Yes, how perfectly awful of you,” she tries, but it sounds forced and neither of them really have the energy to pretend otherwise.

She’s sitting at the edge of the bed and he’s standing by the window and they have not a thing to day to each other. It’s as if the past few days he’s been away has turned them into perfect strangers. Even when she detested his presence they still had more to talk about. Fitz knows it’s his fault, knows that he’s driving this wedge between them. He hates it, he honestly does, but maybe this is the way it must be.

“I’m going to go get us some dinner,” he announces, needing to be free of this room, even if it’s just walking downstairs. “Is there anything you really fancy?”

Jemma shakes her head. “You know what I like.”

He nods and turns around but it’s too late - he’s already caught sight of her face and the wounded confusion in her eyes.

-x-

The situation doesn’t improve after dinner and they spend the hours before bed sitting on their respective beds doing their respective thing with the crappy hotel TV playing a Channel 5 horror movie in the background. It’s remarkably similar to the first night Fitz spent at Jemma’s house, and the parallel does not escape him. Last time they were brought closer together, but he has a feeling that this night might drive them irrevocably apart.

It reaches the hour where it’s acceptable to sleep and Fitz, who has been waiting for the oblivion all day, snuggles deeply underneath the thin duvet and waits for the pull of his eyelids. He waits and waits but the oblivion never comes. His irregular breathing echoes loudly throughout the dark room and keeps him awake, or at least that’s what he tells himself. It’s probably more something to do with the confusion in his head, all of the questions that keep flying about, the inability to tame his mind and thoughts into something manageable.

He listens for Jemma’s breathing, hoping that the regular inhales and exhales will soothe his jumbled brain and lull him to sleep. It’s a few seconds until he realises that hers isn’t regular at all. It’s out of place, like his; quickening and then slowing in the dark. He frowns.

“Jemma?” He whispers, just in case he’s wrong. “Are you awake?”

There’s a few seconds where his only reply is breathing and he wonders if he got it wrong, until she whispers back, “Yes. I can’t sleep. Why are you still awake?”

It’s not as if he can give her the real reason and no longer whispering but in a hushed voice he says, “Yeah, I can’t sleep either.”

“You’ve not been right all day, Fitz,” she tells him, and he feels the guilt swallow him head to toe. When he says nothing she gently sighs. “I want you to know that you can talk to me, you know. I want to help you with whatever is bothering you if I can.”

Oh if only she knew… Fitz is glad the room is pitch black so that his rapidly reddening face isn’t visible to give him away.

“It’s just… it’s nothing important. Not really, anyway. I just need to sort it out myself.”

“Okay,” she sounds unsure but resigned to the fact that she won’t be getting the full answer from him tonight. “But if you ever need to talk, I am here.”

“I know,” he says, “and thanks.” It’s a funny thing but he really does know, and it feels like he could tell her more than he could tell anyone else. But he has to be careful. This dark room feels so safe, invincible. This moment they’re living in a microcosm, a taste of what it could be but can’t ever be. It will kill him, afterwards, and yet he doesn’t want it to pass.

“So,” she says lightly. He deliberately keeps his eyes on the ceiling and doesn’t look across to his left, but he imagines her eyes shining brightly. “Since we’re both awake, what should we do?”

“Pft, I don’t know. Lie awake and watch the sunrise?”

“I think that might be a while away yet.”

It’s so dark that he can’t see his own hand in front of his face. Not even a streetlight shines outside the window and he concedes that the sunrise is, probably, some time off.

It’s quiet after that, the only sound their synchronised breathing echoing throughout the room. Fitz is wide awake now, unable and almost unwilling to attempt sleeping. There’s an electricity in the air, like the way it is before a storm. Something is coming, he’s just not quite sure what it might be.

“I’m sorry you’re spending the night here with me,” Jemma says at last. “In a questionably clean bed in a questionable hotel. All this time you’re spending with me, I hate to think I’m keeping you from somebody more important.”

And it’s on the tip of his tongue to say there’s nobody more important than you but of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t even know where the desire came from. Instead he manages to stutter out, “No,” he says quietly, feeling surprisingly at ease with the question. “There’s nobody at home except Hunter, who likes to think of himself as more important than he is.”

“That’s exactly who I meant,” Jemma laughs. “Hunter must not be happy that I’m always stealing your time.”

Hunter has surprisingly warmed up about the idea of Jemma, especially since she stayed with them and he discovered Fitz’s feelings about her. He even has a badly handwritten ‘plan’ of how to make it work between them. Perhaps a bit misguided at times, but he’s the best friend that Fitz could ever have. He owes him a lot.

“He’s fine, trust me. He’s got Bobbi.”

“It sounds like a fascinating love story.”

Fitz scoffs even though he doesn’t mean to. “Fascinating is definitely the word for it. This job was how he met Bobbi.”

“Really?”

“Yup. He used to do this and she used to be Secret Service. They met, there was some kind of shotgun wedding, she came to live here, they got divorced, she went back to America, then she came back and they decided to try again. Hunter quit this job, Bobbi quit hers and this is the way it’s been for the past year and a bit.”

“Oh wow,” Jemma breathes. He thinks he can hear her smile. “Quite the story. Do you think they’ll last?”

“Yeah,” Fitz hears himself saying, even though he would always say he thought the opposite. “I think they will. At the end of the day, they’re never gonna love anybody else the way they love each other.”

“Aw, Fitz!” Jemma gushes, and he feels himself rolling his eyes. He might have known she would like their story. “How sweet of you. I wouldn’t have thought you capable.”

“Ha ha,” he deadpans. “Hilarious.” Then, being brave: “What about you? Anybody important at home?”

“You probably already know the answer,” she says pointedly. “But no, there isn’t.”

The bravado hasn’t deserted him this time. “How come?”

She sighs wearily and he knows it’s not from the late hour. “I don’t know, really. I could blame it on work, but truly I think there’s just nobody I’ve ever clicked with.”

And he must be feeling supremely brave because he asks, “Nobody at all?”

“Well there was Milton, but he suffered from a brussel-sprout-shaped head and the inability to have a single original thought.”

Fitz has read all about Milton and had thought his head had resembled more of a cabbage but each to their own. He hadn’t seemed like someone Jemma would have dated anyway. A nice guy from all accounts, but dull. He has a job in insurance now. Fitz decides not to divulge this information.

“I love my job,” Jemma admits quietly, as though it’s something shameful. “And I’ve always had trouble making it my second priority. At the end of the day people always let you down but science never has.”

“And you still believe that?” He asks. “Even now?”

“Even now.” He imagines her chin sticking out obstinately. In all this time they still haven’t looked at each other. “It’s not the fault of science that people can’t see its potential. Science just is. Facts are facts. It’s the way people misinterpret them and misuse them that are causing this whole bloody mess.”

In this job he has learned that people are disappointingly just people. They aren’t good and they aren’t bad, they just are, and it can sometimes be too much to expect them to have a higher thought process. It’s frustrating to learn, and maddening to find out that there’s nothing that can be done about it.

“People just judge you,” she continues. “They just take one look at who you are and what you do and listen to absolutely nothing that comes out your mouth.”

He feels his cheeks begin to burn, for in the beginning he did exactly that. In this moment where they are both baring their souls it seems like the perfect opportunity to atone for it.

“I judged you,” he admits quietly. “And I’m sorry. I mean you don’t know that I did that, but I did and I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry about it.”

He awaits the harsh tone but it never comes. Instead he hears her smile, and with it imagines the sparkle in her eyes. “I kind of thought you might have, but it’s alright, Fitz. You had every right. My father did abuse his position to get you as my protection officer.”

“I’m sure he was just worried about you,” he offers. “I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing in his position for my kid.”

She laughs but it’s not the harsh laugh he was expecting. It sounds decidedly sad. “He’s embarrassed by me. My whole life he has warned us, the whole family, not to draw any attention to ourselves, to stay in the shadows, and now with the leak and the news I’ve just done exactly the opposite.”

“Jemma…” he breathes, unable to bear the sound of unshed tears in her voice. “Shadows aren’t meant for everybody. He must get that.”

“You don’t know him like I do, Fitz. He hates things like this. His name, our name, being dragged through the mud. He’s ashamed of me; he wants to hush this all up and make it go away.”

“This isn’t your fault,” he reiterates, needing her to know this, to understand. “You made a good discovery that wasn’t ready to be made public. The weight of that doesn’t fall on your shoulders.”

“It does,” she whispers, and he thinks that this part might not be for him.

It goes quiet again, and he wants to claw back that former closeness, that moment that’s just slipped away. Risking it all, he turns on his side to face her, only able to make out her silhouette in the dark.

“You deserve to be happy, Jemma, and this job isn’t the only thing that’s out there. Today it might be your whole life, but tomorrow is always coming and there’s always something else. Trust me,” he says sincerely, “I would know.”

He sees her turn to face him, feels her hand stretching across the chasm between the beds. His finds hers immediately.

“I feel bad that you’re always making me feel better about things. But thank you, Fitz. Truly.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” he says, squeezing her hand once before letting go.

They still can’t sleep and pass the remaining hours talking about everything that they haven’t before. Fitz confessed about his own father: a man he often wished would just go away but when he eventually did there was a hole deep down that never really got filled. He tells her about moving to London for university, about how he felt so out of place in that big, boisterous city that made Glasgow feel cosy and also very far away.

“And- and I was in an accident… a car accident. It, um, it changed things.”

His tongue sticks as it always does when he talks about it, but he feels her listening, her expectant gaze on his face, and it becomes a little easier to do so. So he tells her everything. About the headaches and the tremors in his hand and the way it took away what he loved. He tells her how Hunter was there for him through all of it, got him this job as a protection officer only to leave himself six months later because he’d fallen madly in love with Bobbi.

Jemma, in return, tells him all about her own parents. How she’s been provided for all of her life but her father was barely home and her mother expects so much from her only child that it’s exhausting in all ways. She admits how lonely she was when she was younger; she has no siblings and all of the other children in her classes were older and intimidated by her brain. She tells him that what she wants the most is for this to be over, to be able to go back to her normal life before all of this change.

“But, even when this is all over, I’d still like it if we could be friends?”

And Fitz, completely leaping over the lines, agrees that he would like it, too.

They talk and talk until the sun comes up and Fitz doesn’t even realise he hasn’t slept. He feels more alive than ever.

In 1959 Heinz Ludwig Arnold, who later became Ernst Jünger’s private secretary, was faced with the same question as many other young men in Western Germany: whether to follow the mandatory conscription into military service and go through six months of military training to be prepared to defend Germany in case of a Soviet invasion – or to become a conscious objector. Expressing in a letter their moral objections to the military service allowed draftees to instead perform civilian services such as working in hospitals or kindergartens. As an enthusiastic reader of Jünger Arnold decided to write him a letter asking for his opinion. Heinz Ludwig Arnold said of himself that at the time he did not consider himself a pacifist but he thought one had to “learn a lesson from history” and also implied in his letter that Jünger too had learned this lesson, writing naively:

In 1914 you went to war with the enthusiasm of one seeking adventure and defending patriotism. But already in 1939 when the Second World War broke out you – experienced through the First World War – renounced war. In the last war you didn’t kill anyone, would not have done it either – I am convinced of that, if you had not been sent to the headquarters in Paris but to the front. You would have evaded the compulsion of command.

A little more than a week later Arnold received a letter from Jünger’s wife Gertha, in which she expresses sentiments shared by both of them that are still of great importance today and might be able to sway some budding pacifists.

Dear Mr. Arnold,

My husband asked me to reply to your letter, as he does want to address the questions raised by you, but he had to go to Munich and is very busy at the moment. In the meantime make do with my letter, in which I want to try to convey you his advice, which by its nature can only be advice, and not binding to you.

The questions that occupy you apply to a large section of the young generation. As long as the world existed there has been war, and the last one forced the then twenty-year-olds to face a very particular problem: despite their inner rejection of the system itself, of Hitler, of this war, which was needless and forced, to fulfil their duty to the nation. The situation demanded it, one could not evade it. I have talked to many of these boys back then, our own, 18-year-old eldest, who then fell, was particularly strongly under the pressure of this situation, because he had been imprisoned for political statements. But he did not hesitate one second, even volunteered for the front, because that seemed to him his duty.

Before us now is the question if in face of the gigantic Russian armament and absolute might, if the worst comes to the worst we want to and are we capable of fighting back, or not. Take an easy example: if you have to walk through a forest, which – as you know – is occupied by bandits who are armed to the teeth: do you protect yourself with a club or even better with a pistol, or do you rely on luck! Here everyone can answer depending on his mentality. We, in our personal case, prefer the weaponry. Our view is: the mightier we are, the less we will be threatened. Furthermore we have to think for the 17 million in the eastern zone [DDR], who could not understand if we held a different attitude, because they know and experience daily what it means to live under a Russian regime, powerless, defenceless, weaponless.

So if you do fulfil your military duty, you only do what millions in all countries on earth also do. One can neither evade the demands of the time, nor those of the own country, and to all of you, the young ones, we want to say: look at Hungary [referencing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956]! They still know the meaning of the word fatherland. Keep it inside of you and preserve it. All the other peoples don’t have to be urged for this, it is for them as self-evident as it has become questionable for us. Thank God not for everyone. The real core has to remain unaffected, we owe this not just to us but also the dead of both wars, whose deaths would otherwise have been meaningless. Do understand me correctly: There is no one today, who would approve of a war after the countless sacrifices that have been made. Likewise we can not prevent it, if it should break out anyhow, because we do not decide it. For us there can only be the way that Europe and the West go, therefore we are allies, therefore we are obliged to contribute our part, in every respect. The individual has to align himself with the total, because a total fate is at stake, in that he is irrevocably interwoven, whether he wants to or not.

Finally I have to object if you think Ernst Jünger would not have fired a shot in the Second World War, had circumstances forced him to do so. Many things were different than in 1914, and with that also the inner condition to approve of the conflict. But he was too much a soldier in the best sense of the word to be able to deny that or want to deny that. He would therefore have participated in every combat as good as anyone else too, had he been sent not to Paris but to the front.

One can call it purpose, destiny, where we are placed: if only we ever do our best in the place that has been chosen for us.

Do you honestly think that ever soldier likes to kill? You use this word. In that case you fall prey to certain paroles and scaremongers which we unfortunately are not lacking. You have to assume entirely different things: the class of the soldier is a class like any other too. One does not need to love it, but one should respect it. In the middle of war each individual one of you can not dwell on asking himself the question whether the killing is permitted: if they All had thought that way, no war would have ever emerged. One has to come to terms with reality, because we do not live in a dream world. In war it is only You or I, and you will shoot when you see the barrel of the other one’s rifle pointed at you. Other laws apply then, one can not transfer them to our civil life.

With that I believe I have answered your main questions, mind you in our sense, as we see the things, as we experienced them ourselves. How much you feel called upon to say Yes or No, I do not know, and don’t want to influence you in this,

Best wishes on your way, from Both of us: Yours, Gretha Jünger

Gretha Jünger died of cancer one year later. Heinz Ludwig Arnold served his six months of military training in 1960 and became Ernst Jünger’s private secretary from 1961 to 1964. He founded the literary newspaper “text + kritik” and in 2011, the year of his death, published the book “Ein abenteuerliches Herz” (An Adventurous Heart), a collection of selected texts from Jünger’s oeuvre, which also includes this letter and many more personal anecdotes from his time with Jünger.

been thinking about a loose assortment of characters again... Number One, Stripes, A1 and Nestlé... theyre all the worst and all have unimaginably enormous problems and theyre doing some shit involving killing virus like monsters that exist in this fake world created by a demon but uh theyre all. the worst. god ive made so many posts explaining who they all are i do it like once every five months and then dont mention them again and then feel compelled to explain them again because i LOVE explaining my ocs over and over because i love the sound of my own voice (when its talking about ocs) so like... Number One is the unofficial leader. it can also be written #1. he used to be called Boss but i changed it bcs it was going to be too confusing forever. he is a doctor and he has a helmet stuck permanently on his head and he is extremely bad at pretending to be a normal human guy. he cant die. hes existed in this freakish other world for so long and no one knows if he forgot who he was because he was there too long or if he isnt real. maybe none of it is real! Number One is possibly some kind of cyborg. what he actually is is the physical realisation of someone's ultimate power fantasy, without any of the ability to back that up with any genuine understanding of how to be like... a charming funny hero. he is incapable of telling jokes that make sense. he talks almost entirely in complete fucking nonsense. he operates on rules that make sense to him and him alone. he thinks that everyone in the world loves him and he never gets mad or takes anything personally. hes also incapable of genuine empathy or understanding when people have problems that need resolving because he lives in a world where he's an all-powerful unstoppable hero and everyone's his sidekick Stripes is bored and shes doing this because she thinks she can have fun with no consequences. shes Number One's best friend because she thinks he's hilarious and they get each other. she loves being cool and killing stuff. she has like... never had any choice or control in her life and its left her a complete nervous wreck in real life so now she's able to live free and powerful she's going completely out of her mind living like a mad thing because she CAN at LAST but her complete refusal to recognise anything that's happening as real or acknowledge consequences for her actions means that she's treating a lot of the people around her... not great because she doesn't. see them or their issues are real. she thinks she's in a fantasy land. she's a good person mostly she just needs a fucking break because she's 21 and her real life has been irrevocably ruined and she has no freedom or control and its destroying her A1 is crushingly, suicidally lonely and isolated and so fucking desperate for love hes willing to do anything. he has literally no one who gives a single fuck about him and in nightmare land there's people who have to be around him ALL the time. he comes across as coolly sarcastic and kind of a coward but he just incredibly badly wants people to care about him and he's enormously clingy as a result. he's terrified of Number One but follows him around anyway. he's infatuated with Nestlé. he has absolutely no ability to criticise anyone. hes the kind of person who would get described as "wild" on a night out when he just cant control himself on alcohol and has no self control or real sense of self preservation Nestlé comes across as darkly cynical and funny in an edgy way but he is an enormous fucking piece of shit. he hates everyone and thinks he's better than all of them. he has no capacity to care about anyone but himself but he leads A1 along because he likes the attention and the unwavering approval. he wants power more than anything else and he desperately wants to kill Number One and take his place as the leader of their little world but Number One is unkillable and all-powerful and even Nestlé isnt stupid enough to try but he is constantly looking for some way to lead Number One to his death. he's obsessed. he's a compulsive liar who tells everyone he's a cop but he was. never a cop. he just wanted to be a figure of authority. he tells people things he think they will find impressive. he is the only one actually succeeding at trying to figure out way the fuck is going on tho and he holds those cards very tightly to his chest because he loves having any power to wield over everyone, however limited it is.

Love.

Our souls float across the sea of life, in vessels made of blood and bone, taking on water as they go, occasionally sinking ever so slightly — perhaps even imperceptibly — into despair and decline. It is the hell of life’s long autumn, an elegiac march to our inevitable decay into the earth that birthed us. In spring and summer, if we choose to, we shine as warm and bright as we ever will, all boundless energy and burning desire, and humanity is all too eager to cozy up next to us to bask in our glow, should we let them.

Love is humanity’s ultimate pursuit, most innate instinct save for survival itself, and most relentlessly researched, opined, romanticized and prized condition. It is the noun and the verb, the yin and the yang. It is the gods upon which we’ve built our churches, and the art which paints our progress. It is socialized, cultivated, and unique within the self and between the afflicted. Distilled to its essence: It is a ritualistic, highly coveted, goal-directed firing of neurotransmitters in just the right proportion —the perfect cocktail of testosterone, serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine playing the harps of our axons in just the right key, occasionally arbitrarily, often in harmony. But if this is all in our brains, and this is all just one great biological trick, why do we love at all?

Our lives are inherently lonely. The body is a vessel and a prison, a perpetually confining hall inside of which we exist and outside of which we would cease to begin. We are unwitting hall monitors, guardians of the temple, inmates within the asylum of the self. No one can ever really know the around-the-clock, underneath-the-skin version of us. As we observe the outside, experience the essence of being, buy into the causes and motives of others, we are slightly careened off course, irreparably and irrevocably altered. You can find it, in infinitesimal yet infinitival doses, in the lasting gaze into James Stewart’s glare upon realization that he is, in fact, alive, or the minutes spent immersed in the intro of “New York City Serenade,” to use two highly personal and highly specific examples. An unshakable discomfort, a fleeting euphoria and warm glow that carves neural pathways the way time and water etch their names in stone. It is this that allows us respite from endless imprisonment, from a yearning loneliness. It comes from where you find it, should you seek it.

To be born human is to be born with capacity to beat back this loneliness the way light conquers darkness, day conquers night and gravity conquers flight. It is through action and presence, immersion and emotion, that we affix ourselves to the whole, attach ourselves to one another, and momentarily transcend the curse of a locked coordinate in space-time. When we reach out to heal, stand up to our bitterest demons, paint with a fine brush or build with our hands, we are doing so to reach outside ourselves and lasso the world closer to us. The greatest things we will ever do in our lives are those things which breathe life into the souls of others. In doing so, we can only begin to realize that the universe is not merely something that happens to us, but something that we happen to. We find the kingdom of shared suffering and collective experience in the smallest of things, should we seek it.

Our lives are also inherently transient, tiny and random, too temporary for comfort. We buzz like bees, and hunt like sharks. We’re loosely tethered to this earth by the breath we inhale and the blood that courses through our veins. Should we ever find ourselves thinking our concerns are of great import, that our life lacks purpose or meaning, we can rest easy knowing that our impermanence is the hallmark of our existence. Immortality waits for no one, not even the believers. And the reason we reach out, our capacity to connect, is our way of tying ourselves just a little tighter to life itself. It is duality of humanity: Our altruism and selfishness engaged in a desperate tango. It is our extraordinary desire to feel like we matter at odds with our compulsion to alleviate the suffering of others.

I do not mean suffering in an overt or obvious sense, though that certainly qualifies. Life itself is suffering. We wither, we break and we ache. We yearn and long and need. We wrestle with darkness, our restless souls feverishly seeking a place to belong, a home for our quirks and passions. All this warmth is too much not to share. We are time-bombs hoping for a cozy place to nestle before we burst into flames. This endless parade of days, this relentless attack of years on our vessel scars us and cracks us but only wins once. I don’t say this to scare you. I say this to encourage you.

We love so that we may feel less lonely and more permanent. The loneliness imprisons us, the transience eats at us. We love to free and feed ourselves and the world around us. No other truth will do this. Not change. Not the present moment. Certainly not death. Our wandering souls are taking on water, and that water has to go someplace, it begs to be shared and divided among the whole. The suffering is our shared struggle, and it is the singular disease that we all feel to some degree. It is more true than the gods we kneel to or the art we reach out to. It is only through this bloodletting of our suffering, through this love we exchange, that we can ever attempt to overcome ourselves.

People careen in and out, bound only by struggle, each locked inside a cell made of cells, warming ourselves by the cauldron of life before the light flickers out. Tears and sweat and booze are spilled, and we are drawn to this place the way moons orbit a planet, or the way light bends in the water. Nothing is forever. The water evaporates. The solar systems melt into the abyss. Yet, just because love ends doesn’t mean it never happened. All of this warmth, all of this ache, this is the only thing other people can see, hear and feel. By sharing it, holding it, and decanting it onto others, love is the only thing that lasts long after we do. It is the anecdote to the shared struggle, and the only thing that lasts. Love is the truest thing we can do, feel or become — and that’s why we do it. We love because it’s the only thing we make that makes us real.

Deal better with email

Only powerful institutions had access to long distance communicating in the early days of mail.

Powerful groups of individuals have sought to restrain the flow of information throughout history. For a long time, just authorities and the Catholic Church had the resources to dispense information on a big scale. Empires and authorities have been using communication as a way to combine their power since antiquity. In the Persian Empire, as an example, messages could be transmitted by horse at the rate of 100 mph -- as early as 600 BC! A new horse had to be switched in along the route at each postal stop. The Abbasid Caliphate had over 900 postal stops in 860 AD, and Caliph Abu Jalbar Mansur formerly said in a language that a faithful postmaster was just as important as the Chief of Police or the Minister of Finance. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church issued significant doctrinal rulings or governmental decisions by disseminating scrolls all across Europe. Frequent people, on the other hand, didn't have access to long-distance communication before the end of the nineteenth century. Sending email was quite costly, too. For just 1 letter, you had paper (that was expensive at the time), silk to wrap it in, wax to seal it and accessibility to an official indication. Matters were further complicated by the fact that folks didn't have fixed addresses. With addresses such as this, it was often difficult for letters to wind up in the right location! Communication fashions changed as mail services became more democratic and accessible over time. Not everyone enjoyed the change, however. In reality, The New York Times reported the nation had been afflicted by a postcard-sending "outbreak" later that same year! Massive governments also begun investing more in their postal systems to build up them. The British Royal Mail, for instance, used 42,000 people and had opened over 12,000 offices by 1873. By that point, mail had gradually begun to become a more regular part of people's lives. In 1840, the average American only delivered three letters annually; by 1900, that number had climbed to 69. People used mail for various different purposes, too. Emigrant groups composed letters to remain in contact with friends and relatives, and some people even begun using it for pleasure. Communication styles also shifted as mail became more widely available. In 1871, The New York Times published a complaint about what we currently call "flaming" as it happens online: competitive, violent insults sent out to individuals. There were even early types of spam! Some unlucky people got tricked into making false investments as early as 1887, when they received letters requesting them to claim the estates of allegedly deceased distant relatives. The telegraph provided the first means of real-time, long-term conversation. Letters have become much easier to send at the turn of the century, but they still took a very long time to get where they were moving. Overall, communication was fairly slow. But the telegraph changed that completely and irrevocably. The telegraph has been an incredibly powerful communication tool -- so powerful that it changed the way people perceived time and space. For the very first time, individuals and information in far off places were quickly accessible. Ahead of the transatlantic cable was laid in 1870, it took five months to send information from London to New York. Since the world grew smaller and communication became much simpler, even enemies started making long-distance small talk with each other. Generals from the American Civil War of 1860 sent every other brief, provocative messages like, "I see your condition through my telescope" and "We've intercepted your supplies. Give in like a good fellow." The debut of the telegraph even caused the very first era of information overload. People now had unprecedented access to news and communicating. William James, the famous philosopher, coined the term Americanitis to describe the perpetual fear of never being on time, and nervousness about missing out on something -- a myriad of stress brought on by the telegraph. Newspapers also began printing larger editions as the telegraph allowed people more access to news. Soon they were printing every day instead of once a week, covering news from all around the world; but not everyone liked this development. The Michigan newspaper Alpeno Echo even closed down its telegraph service because it felt it was becoming the voice of the world, in place of the record of its community. Emails are fundamentally different from any prior form of communication. The telegraph peaked around 1945, when roughly 240 million telegrams were sent per year. In 2007, the number of emails sent globally hit 35 trillion -- a figure more than 10,000 times higher. So just how did email get so successful and what exactly does it mean for us? Mail has made communication much easier and faster than ever before. Not only can it be instantaneous, it also costs virtually nothing! Ahead of email, folks needed to write addresses (or descriptions of a place!) On paper or envelopes and then send them out individually. Now, we can send messages to people, or even large groups of individuals, with just one click. You can forward a message or share a piece of news without thinking about it whatsoever. Email can also be free. Anyone with a computer or telephone and access to the net can use it everywhere, from any place. Communication is getting a lot more efficient -- but it might actually be too efficient. Now that it is so easy to send and receive messages, we are often expected to reply instantly. Online messages constantly interrupt our day. In fact, one 2006 study found that the average American employee was interrupted 11 times per hour, leading to an overall reduction of $600 billion. Another threat of constant email access is it may create a never-ending to-do list for you. When you can get new jobs or advice at any moment, your friends, family or supervisor may expect you to be accessible constantly, always prepared to change your aims. It goes without saying that email is efficient. However, it creates a lot of anxiety for us too. Emailing is highly addictive and changes the chemistry of your brain. Email is a digital form of communication, but it still generates problems in the physical world. Actually, email functions much like a medication. When you receive a favorable email, you are feeling a sense of recognition and validation. This, in turn, compels you to continue checking your inbox over and over so you may find that feeling repeatedly. The resulting addiction is strong: in 1 survey designed to measure email response period, the normal time was just 104 seconds. Seventy percent of the participants reacted in just seven seconds. Email withdrawal can cause distress and anxiety, also. In 2007, one real estate agent said that his "blood ran cold" if the Blackberry network went down for a few hours. Our brains just are not meant for the new challenges posed by email. Brain imaging has proven that repetitive behaviour, such as compulsive email-checking, causes imbalances in dopamine levels. Your dopamine increases when you check your email, so you start to crave it. Compulsive email-checking has a negative impact on your memory. When you attempt to do too many jobs simultaneously, your mind's attention is directed away from your hippocampus, which is responsible for storing information. It focuses instead on your striatum, which deals with repetitive jobs. This is why it's more difficult to remember what you're doing if you're multitasking. Emails also send very little info to our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for empathizing with other people and addressing them at an appropriate tone. So, they can bring in a lot of misunderstanding. The prefrontal cortex is very vulnerable and impressionable through adolescence, so young men and women who develop email habits may also develop permanent problems with communication. Email interrupts our everyday lives. Our email customs have a significant effect on our emotions and everyday behavior. They change the way we socialize with our families, friends and kids! Because email is a significant disruption in our daily lives. The speed, frequency and anonymity of email can leave you feeling tired at the end of the day. We're also reading fewer books these days due to email, and also our eye movements have changed; we are now likely to skimming instead of reading. Email has an impact on our sleep patterns too. Studies have shown that individuals are now sleeping less than they did 20 decades ago, largely due to our need to always be connected. Madonna even confessed in 2008 that she and Guy Ritchie slept with their telephones beneath their pillows, so they could catch them whenever they needed. "It's not unromantic," she said, "it is sensible." The set is currently blessed. You also spend less time with your loved ones when you are ever looking at your telephone or computer. He always needed to create bad trade-offs, nevertheless. He ruined his son Lego figure at a play fight so that he can reply an email, leaving his son to reconstruct the figure on his own. The tyranny of email can be overcome. We've seen that email is extremely addictive and changes our brains. Nevertheless, it is possible for individuals to overcome this tyranny. Let us discuss some strategies for controlling your email so it will not end up controlling you. First off, you need to stay in control of when you're actually using email. Consider checking your email just a set variety of times every day, or only using it during work hours. Determine what quantity of email is healthy and necessary, and cut any excess use of it. In this way, you avoid unnecessary interruptions and may respond to a very long email thread without having to look at every single message as it arrives. You make things worse if you check your email just after you wake up just before going to sleep -- it implies you're subjecting your disposition to other people's messages at key points on your day. So, aim to have a couple of email-free hours on each end. We also need to alter the way we write our emails. Give your email a efficient subject line that summarizes the main parts, and be sure to keep your emails brief and just write information that is absolutely vital. Then, encourage other people to do the same. Let them know you do not always need a "Thank you message" and keep your inbox free of any messages that are not useful. Strive to locate a balance between email and other, offline tools for planning and communicating. Phone calls and meetings are far better than email if you're talking something sensitive. Group discussions must be held in individual, as group emails may get endless and disorienting. Try rearranging your desk, too. Desks are often organized around computers, but be sure you still have sufficient space to write on paper and make phone calls comfortably. Do not cut paper and pens out of your life! No additional kind of communication has affected our lives as deeply as email. It offers free, instant access to communication from anywhere with internet access. Though its benefits are manifold, email has its drawbacks too. Email is strong, so make sure you restrain drink Water it -- or else it can control you. Use your voice when you need to discuss something lengthy and complex. Nuances could be dropped in mails, creating accidental confusion or ill feelings. If you need to go over something important, it is ideal to do it in person. If that isn't an option, make a phone call -- otherwise, emails might actually be counterproductive. Some Guidelines for Getting the Most Out of Email Get a head start when you have a free moment. Instead of assessing Facebook for the umpteenth time while waiting in line or sitting in a cab, take a couple of minutes to lighten your email loading. You may begin with knocking out mails which you can tell from the topic line will not take very long to read and react to. This will make it simpler when you really do sit down to respond to emails. Put aside a particular time to answer emails. Because other jobs can appear more urgent, we frequently kick the email down the street and leave it for later. The outcome is that unread messages can pile up, and the only way to catch up would be to put aside a committed time whenever you're focused entirely on whittling your inbox. Take 15 minutes once you complete lunch each day or set aside 1 evening per week a "work night" to focus on email. Decide quickly if you need to respond. One very easy way to lessen the time you spend on email would be to not allow useless emails linger. Immediate archive emails if the sender, subject, and opening sentence indicate the email isn't one worth studying. Another suggestion is to immediately sort new emails into one of 3 categories: Answer now, rename and delete, and Star for later. This allows you to keep things moving while saving e-mails that require a longer response to get a more suitable time. If an email needs only a brief reply, do it immediately and get it out of the way. When you do respond, keep things short and sweet. Save time by getting to the purpose of your reply as quickly as possible. Replying to a lengthy email with a few sentences or even just a few words isn't rude. If you can effectively communicate your response in only a couple of words there's simply no reason to add fluff. Do not even say 'Hello, so'. A simple 'no' will suffice and will earn you lots of respect. You can also create canned responses to frequently asked questions when potential and ditching unnecessary responses such as "Cool." and "Thanks." Do not get caught up on email offers and newsletters. Instead of needing to operate around recurring email offers from retailers or updates from providers such as Facebook, set up junk mail filters which will automatically divert them away from your inbox. In this manner, they are not on your manner, but could still go back and examine them anytime. You'll be able to register for a free service such as unroll.me to unsubscribe from blast emails you are not interested in getting anymore. Give yourself an email break once you go on holiday. Among the greatest areas of taking a vacation is getting the chance to unplug for a little. On the downside, doing this generally means you return to a mountain of unread emails once you return. Leave your out-of-office reply set up throughout your first day back on the job. The magic is in adding a single extra day to it that you legitimately have a catch-up day to get your feet back under you when you return. Do not increase the clutter by sending unnecessary emails of your own. A surefire method to fill up your inbox would be to ask someone an open-ended question that will lead you into a back-and-forth exchange that performs over several days and heaps of emails. Rather, do not be afraid to give someone a telephone call, or, if they operate in your workplace, just walk over to them and have a conversation. In this manner, you receive the information you need in a timely manner and avoid a game of email ping-pong.

Unpopular and Unmade

I’m gonna be honest.  School was always a fool’s game to me.  From what I know of what happened early on, what I remember, no special talents were identified in yours truly.  I recall trying very hard to pay attention, especially when it was made a point that I was not keeping up.  Looking back, the experience across the board and within the incremental process was full of self-disappointment, emotional put downs, and constantly led me to try little to excel.  By 2nd grade, I knew nothing and knew I knew nothing.  By 3rd grade, it was obvious to me that I was being treated differently than others and that it was affecting my level of interaction with others.  By 5th grade, school was beyond stressful.  The prospect of going into middle school was daunting, knowing the proficiencies I was lacking as I continued to know that I knew nothing by comparison to average students.  The harder I tried to make myself better at school, as it was taught to me, the harder things got for me, for at every turn of achievement the ladder only got taller and the rungs farther apart.  I kept on having to jump higher and higher, faster and faster, while my classmates seemingly enjoyed themselves, accessing a wide network of friends and mentors and by the merits of the education system, clubs, teams, and activities outside of school.  Others who were not as social even seemed to be having a grand old time compared with the tediously boring and eventually self-deprecating tasks of study-hall and “special” classes devoted to “slow learners.”  Where student quality was already in salvage mode, quality students were the last thing I ran into.  C, D, and F students were all lumped in together.  We were encouraged to be aware of our faults and discouraged of our ability at the same time.  It was a bad environment to say the least, but that it coexisted with a relatively healthy or supportive education system for others is still more interesting.  

Before education took root, I knew that I am here because I want to be here, because I want things to be the way they are, a wisdom eternal and hidden from ourselves for too long.  In other words, everything is in order and there is nothing of which to resent or be ashamed.  That feeling was only compromised during transitions from one level to another, between elementary and middle, middle and high, and high school and university. The feelings I was having and have again today are irrevocable and unyielding, despite my efforts to ignore them for a period.  I was meant to journey through a struggle, so that I could defeat it in ways that accelerate its total demise.  Hence, I didn’t resist the schools or the religions, the cliques, or the hopes of parents.  I never fought for any reason and never denied the envy that comes with witnessing more popular routes being taken than the one I felt I had to follow.  

Going against the grind wasn’t just cool to me. On the contrary, I thought it to be unwise or distasteful, but it was and is who I am.  Whether it was out of visceral necessity or something more abstract, I always opted for counter-strategy, cunning, and caution above and beyond the merits of society despite my moral and computational limitations.  I knew the power of silence, patience, timing, and fear, but there was something, finally, that I didn’t know, that I learned to my benefit toward the completion of the undergraduate years.  

I had forgotten how integral each of those powers were to a whole, autonomous, and unique being.  Before that realization took place, fear was taking priority and pervaded all interests, exemplified through many preventable embarrassments of hidden insecurity.  Even if I had loads of money or privilege, the mind had always remained in a mode of survival.  The years of education, through college, never had me in a single protest, nor truly devoted to any club, society, or cause, no explicit passions whatsoever, exiting many personally novel commitments half-way through initiation. Nothing felt right except to stay in and hunker down.  If something did catch my eye, it would be oppressed and repressed quite consciously, and yet, at great pain.  Devotion itself was often worthless to me, so it would appear to others.  A nihilist from birth, so I believed, there were neither freedom nor salvation to gain.  Still, life today has paid for those older days.  

Why this is true depends on a will to bring the authenticity of such a statement into the world, to be and not be made, as a creator of creation, as an atheist of God.  The occurrence of any depth of resolution, as a journey to scale, brings measurable improvement.  A stream of substantial reciprocity like this is reliable, simple, and risky enough to be real.  Indeed, life may be worth the effort it takes to live.  Mistakes and incremental corrections of mistakes can effectively endorse more and more efficient improvements upon our lives. Some call it common sense, but if only it were a fact so commonly utilized.  What is accumulated over time is an integrated pattern of information that comes with and offers us very satisfying adaptations, a synergy as it were.  To make it the best we can make it, we also can pass those adaptations out of the abstract and into the eternal spectrum that contrasts our very narrow view of the world, investing in the foundations of our highest desires and highest powers. Of course, finding those foundations is easier said than done.  

To know and not just say confidently that this generational, compounding, and benevolent element exists, it would need to prove to the living, every day, that it is worth keeping, and all that need be done then is to keep it.  Seeds are for spreading, but then, come harvest, many are for saving, and on and on it goes, getting better and better.  More complex versions of existence seem to consistently await us regardless of our values, obliging us to keep our values up to date with the current or future trends and patterns of the world we behold.  It is, therefore, important to state that it is because of this sacred and very human phenomenon of tradition and intergenerational culture that any of us are prospering or alive at all.  The Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and, in fact, the Universe has been giving itself to and passing through all of us, since we were around long enough to receive it.  Some see the sacred in the outstanding cultural objects, and some see it in the less exposed and more under-pinning, negative nature of the world as we know it. Put another way, the epigenetic field is as pertinent and pervasive as the genetic field, from which so many are most comfortable sourcing their proof of life-worth or identity.  Someone we cannot ever meet and that never personally met anyone living today took far-reaching action, through both time and space, for us to live in a relatively pleasant way, and that miracle of that conscientiousness is more common in places that also aspire to a rich future, to viable spaces to raise children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.  Mere life alone is not much a miracle of notice, but so is the making of it.  

Now, I have to start on why this was meant to be. I was wise and I was weird, because the schools held me back, put me down, made me vulnerable, were frustrated by me, and, yet, I stayed out of drugs and drama, had few friends, started no fights, picked on no one, respected all authorities, tolerated abuse, used manners, followed directions, and kept coming back for more.  We would have to go back to pre-school to find a Josh that attempted to physically exit the classroom, prying open windows to escape and having to be torn from the classroom door when dropped off in the morning. By kindergarten I realized that my limitations had been set within that room and other rooms alike.  It would have to be tolerated.

In undergraduate, not much had really changed and I have now easily, nostalgically compared the anticipation of college with that of middle school.  I wasn’t very kind to myself.  The first two semesters marked the best and worst times and some of the most defining moments of my life.  If I was supposed to go somewhere, I’d go there due to compulsion, guilt, utter loyalty, or sincere submission to authority.  Waiting till the last second to do homework or show up for class was as routine then as it was in elementary; miserable the whole way and facing inevitable punishment through and through, forcing everything and knowing I would have to do more when it was over for everyone else.  I was preparing for overtime and hating it more each day.  The odds were always great in breaking through personal limitations, thought to be fixed by prior experiences and cynical, desacralized philosophies of hopeless, oppressed positions against the world.  The demands made by school were, by the college years, the least of my concern; only willing to comply out of a curiosity for higher possibilities that thankfully always managed to slip through my tortured beliefs of helplessness.  Obsessions allowed me to be a student.  My lacking mathematical skills had scarred me and I saw the SAT as the last mark I would have to carry, likening the introduction to a university to that of a prison or higher-level self-torture camp, where I could discover even more deeply how dumb I was.  The only escape was to distract myself with studies that the university would not offer undergrads who required prerequisites most students had completed in high school.  

I went to school again, followed directions, but never deeply or truly believed in the process or that anything was right about it.  The experience of higher learning and formal learning was a great suffering that repulsed me.  It disgusted me further to discover that a college education was considered high leisure, but I adapted it in some useful way, improving steadily with the extermination of the discomfort and complaint that has plagued my life and others’ lives thus. My optimism grew to maturity in the last 3 out of 5 years of undergraduate curricula.  Employment instilled, finally, a sense of dignity, of progress and not stagnation, heading for change and not heading for eternal disappointment. All of schooling has been and still is a journey of self-discovery, although it had a rough beginning.