fandom is so weird because like... am i grown woman? yes. has it been the better part of a decade since i first watched ouat and fell in love with regina mills? yes. i was a child then. i am an adult now. i have less free time and more worries and yet when i find myself struggling or having a bad time, what do i turn to? thinking about my goddamn blorbo. writing fic wherein i can better understand parts of my own troubles via these fictional people who i have come to know, over the years, as if they are old friends. sharing shitposts with u lot to make u giggle. there is an unending well of comfort and familiarity here that is so strange and silly and special.
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because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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PLEASEEEE can u show the time where reader caught rafe punching the squishmallows that really sent me
"don't laugh, okay?" you say it softly, right outside the door to your bedroom.
"why would i laugh?" rafe’s asking seriously, but you're already a tiny bit embarrassed of what lies on the other side of the door and you're unsure how rafe will react.
"it's, like, a third of the size of your room-"
"shut up and open the door."
you sigh, turning the handle and pushing to let yourself in first. rafe follows, staring around the tiny room observantly. his eyes flicker from corner to corner, taking it in. you stand to the side patiently, playing with your hands, in particular the ring rafe had just gotten you, fiddling and twisting it repeatedly.
he walks around for a second, stopping at your bookshelf to take a look at the titles on the shelves and then moving on, staring at the photos on the wall and then sniffing a stray candle on the nightstand. he finally stops at your dresser, glancing over the lotions and perfumes littered on top to stare at the framed picture of the two of you perched right in the center, odds and ends he's gotten you in the last month scattered around.
"so?" you question quietly, eyes big.
"which drawer's got your panties?"
"rafe! shut up."
"it's a cute room. why'd you get so worried?"
"i don't know. habit." you settle on the bed, bringing your biggest squishmallow onto your lap, holding it in your arms comfortingly. rafe's still looking around.
"always had one favorite color, huh?"
"yes," you admit, squeezing the stuffed animal harder. rafe finally comes to join you on the bed, gesturing to the squishmallow as soon as he does.
"what the hell is that?"
"this is ricky. he's a clownfish. he has a career, i just can't remember-"
"huh?"
"they all have jobs and hobbies, rafe. the squishmallows. i think he's an underwater singer or something."
"you sleep with that huge thing on the bed?"
"every night. when i'm here, at least. i should get one for tannyhill!"
"don't know about all that." he takes it into his hands, moving it around, observing it from all sides. "every single night?"
"yeah. why?"
"nothin'."
the conversation changes to the books on your nightstand, and you forget all about the squishmallow resting on your bed until you step out to get a cup of lemonade for rafe.
walking back in, you wonder if you put enough sugar in, when you open the door to see rafe smacking your squishmallow with his right hook, right to his little face.
"what are you doing?!" it spills out before you can stop it, the lemonade almost falling out of your hand.
"look at the dent. how does it go back to how it was?" he questions, while you look over at him, horrified. "what's inside it? feathers, or some shit?" he looks over to get an answer, when he looks at your distraught face.
"what?"
even when he sleeps over, he's never allowed to touch your squishmallow again.
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probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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