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zegrasdrysdale · 23 days

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jamie and reader looking through baby names :((

[ what’s in a name ] j. drysdale

paring : Jamie Drysdale x fem!reader

summary : Jamie and his girlfriend try to find the perfect baby name

warning(s) : none really

author’s note : this is very dialogue heavy btw. it’s very conversation based. also kinda short oops

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Baby Drysdale is due in a month and they still don’t have a name. The nursery in their new house is Voorhees got done before they found a baby name.

There was a time where she knew what she wanted her baby's name to be. She was also ten. Now she’s an adult and is in charge of naming an actual human being.

Today is the day though. She and Jamie are going to sit down and pick out their baby’s name. Baby Drysdale will have a name before coming into the world if it’s the last thing they do.

Jamie sits at the kitchen island with a notebook while she runs around the kitchen to cook dinner. She’s been craving a baked dish so she’s making lasagna for them.

“Do we want a neutral gender name?” Jamie questions. “Since we don’t know if the baby’s a boy or a girl. We can come up with names for both a boy and a girl if you want too.”

She gently stirs the large pasta noodles as she thinks. “I think gender neutral is good,” she replies. “I do have one request though.”

“What?”

“If we have a girl, her middle name is Marie for my mom.”

She looks up to look at her boyfriend and Jamie smiles at her. “Absolutely,” he says. “I won’t say no to that.”

Her mom died about three months before they found out they were expecting Baby Drysdale. It’s like she sent them the little angel growing in her daughter’s belly. That is why Baby Drysdale’s middle name will be Marie if they are a girl.

Jamie scribbles down the idea. “Okay, we have a middle name,” he comments. “If we have a girl. What about if we have a boy?”

She wracks her brain as she tries to think about a middle name if Baby Drysdale is a boy. “What about your brother or dad?” she asks. “Maybe a grandfather that meant a lot to you? Any of their names?”

Her boyfriend sighs behind her. “I mean, my dad’s name is Gary and my brother’s name is Charlie,” he replies. “I wasn’t super close to my grandfathers so I wouldn’t want to name our baby after one of them.”

“I like Charlie as a middle name,” she comments. “Would he mind if we stole his name?”

Jamie laughs. “I don’t think he’ll mind,” he tells her. “He would probably love it.”

“Then Charlie as a middle name if Baby Drysdale is a boy,” she says.

She pours the cooked pasta into a strainer in the sink so she can start layering the dish. “Now we need a first name,” Jamie says. “Especially a name that goes with both middle names we picked out.”

There’s movement behind her and she glances back. He is grabbing is laptop and bringing it back to the island. “What are you doing?” she questions.

“I am going to find a list of names and we are going to go through it until we find one we both like,” he says as he types something. “And the baby’s name isn’t going to be something basic and common either. We’re going all in.”

She laughs and layers the dish. “Alright,” she sighs. “Hit me with some names.”

“We got Avery first on the list,” Jamie tells her.

Avery Marie or Avery Charlie. “I’d like it better as a girl’s name,” she admits. “Avery Marie sounds very pretty.”

Jamie scribbles that done. “I agree,” he replies. “Next we have Taylor.”

She thinks about it as she licks some sauce off her finger. “I like it,” she says. “For both.”

More scribbling as she throws a layer of foil on top of the dish. “Next we have Wyatt,” Jamie says. “I will say that I am not a fan of this name. It doesn’t go well with either middle name.”

“Agreed. Next.”

There’s a moment of silence between them as she puts the dish in the oven and timer. She walks over to Jamie and wraps her arms around him from behind so she can see over his shoulder. “How about Silas if Baby D is a boy?” he asks. “It just popped up at a separate list at the end.”

Silas Charlie. “I love it,” she replies. She watches Jamie write it down.

“So I think we have our names,” Jamie comments. “Avery if Baby D is a girl and Silas if Baby D is a boy.” He looks up at her.

Without realizing it, tears well in her eyes. “We have our names,” she echoes. The tears spill onto her cheeks.

Jamie turns in the high stool and faces her. “Baby, you don’t have to cry,” he coos as he uses his thumbs to dry her tears. “This is supposed to be a happy moment.”

“I know,” she laughs. “I can’t help it. I’m a very emotional person right now.”

He pulls her into a hug and rests a hand on her belly to give the baby a hug. “I love you both,” Jamie says. “Emotions and all.”

She laughs and rests her cheek on her boyfriend’s head as he gently rubs her belly.

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celtic-crossbow · 10 months

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It’s Alright, It’s Okay

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x fem!reader {Could be platonic but that’s not where my brain was}

Setting: Alexandria era

Warnings: Mentions of self harm, struggles with mental illness

Summary: You accidentally allow Daryl to see your scars.

A/N: Yesterday sucked for me for a million different reasons. This is really a way for me to vent more than anything. I’ve never done a y/n before so I’m sorry if I screw it up. No beta, all mistakes are cause I suck.

“I got the dishes!” You volunteered, probably a little too cheerfully, before collecting the empty plates from the coffee table and shuffling along to the kitchen. You had a dining table but it had never seen a single use.

It had been a rather uneventful day in Alexandria, for which you were thankful. That meant no one had died just trying to complete what used to be mundane tasks for everyday living. Now, since the world had gone to shit, everything was a risk. Just scrubbing the sauce from those dishes could somehow very well lead to your demise. Regardless, you rolled up your sleeves and ran the water.

Daryl had brought home a deer earlier in the day. It was a large buck that would feed the town for a while if the meat was rationed properly. He had been given his own portion, as per usual, for being responsible for the kill. The archer had used the meat grinder in the kitchen at his and Carol’s place, meaning, of course, that Carol had offered and he had shrugged while sharpening a knife.

You had chosen that moment to knock on their door. The silver-haired woman had shown you a cookie recipe but the pantry was out of an ingredient. Carol usually had the things you needed or would at least know something you could substitute.

“Oh, man! My sister used to make venison spaghetti!” You had commented while she had stepped away to get what you needed. You had half a box of angel hair pasta and a can of sauce at your place. “Hey, Dixon?” You continued when he hummed in acknowledgment, “think I could steal just a little of this to make some?”

He had stared at you for a moment before giving a nod. In your excitement, you had thrown him an invite to share the meal just as Carol returned and handed over the ziplock bag with the ingredient you needed for the cookies.

“Alright.” He drawled, sheathing the knife he had been working with.

You quickly invited Carol as well, realizing what you had done, but she smiled knowingly and shook her head. You had at least waited until you were on their porch before slapping a palm to your forehead and calling yourself an idiot.

Still, dinner had gone over without a hitch, even if you did sit side by side on the couch with your plates on your laps. You had laughed when he’d tip back his head to dangle the end of the noodles over his mouth so he could descend the forkful carefully. He had even chuckled when you had dropped half a bite onto your shirt when trying to mimic his actions. It had really been…nice.

Now you stood in your kitchen, rinsing the dishes and placing them in the strainer. You hadn’t heard him enter, but you rarely did. The man moved like a ghost for someone his size.

“S’that from?” His sudden inquiry from just behind you had startled you enough to send the plate clattering into the sink. It didn’t break, thank goodness.

“What’s what from?” You replied, casting him a brief glance before you continued your task. The last dish was quickly rinsed and placed with the others.

“Them scars.”

You were drying your hands on a towel when you suddenly stilled. Fuck. The pale, raised imperfections stood out starkly on your forearms and you instantly felt nausea creeping up your throat, burning at the back of your tongue. “Oh, that’s nothing.” You dropped the towel and quickly started to roll down your sleeves.

But he was faster.

His calloused fingers felt rough against your skin in contrast to his gentle grip around your wrist. You felt electric pulses centering from where he was touching you, but the shame erupting from within you wouldn’t allow you to dwell on how right that felt.

Tears were already forming on your lashes as he studied the myriad of scars littering your arm from wrist to elbow. Some were larger or more jagged than others, but each one contained a story of your past; a hurt you inflicted upon yourself to cope with the hurt done to you by someone else.

“Don’t look like nothin’ to me.”

You had never heard him speak so softly and it made you feel that much worse. Daryl Dixon was anything but soft. For him to pity you must mean you were a real piece of work.

“Please,” you begged, your bottom lip quivering. You were barely holding yourself together. “Just…leave it.”

Those striking blue eyes left your arm to focus on your face. You quickly looked away, lest he see how pathetic you were. He released you and took a step back.

“Thanks for dinner, Y/N.”

You nodded and tried to smile, but never met his gaze before you heard the front door close. You sat on the kitchen floor and cried for hours, finally dragging yourself to the couch a few hours before you’d have to be up for the start of another day.

Months passed by and things changed, as they often did. You started to find Daryl sitting on your porch steps, cleaning his crossbow or tinkering with some motorcycle part. Most days, you just offered him a greeting and went on your way. Some days, when you were feeling brave or especially curious, you would ask about his weapon. His replies were always short and gruff but never rude or angry.

Eventually, this became the norm. You started bringing him water or lemonade, sitting with him while you drank your tea. Conversations were never lengthy but enough to ensure any silence was comfortable. You started to miss him when he was gone for runs or recruiting. Then you’d open your door one morning to find him perched in what you had long ago deemed ‘his spot’ and the smile that would grace your features was unbidden yet genuine.

One warm summer evening, while you sat together on the top step, your head was laid against his shoulder while his arm was draped around yours. The first time you had tried to lean on him, he had flinched so hard that he had dropped the water glass and you had apologized profusely while cleaning up the mess. At some later point, you both had started dropping your walls, bit by bit, and now here you were.

Still, even with the contentment you found in each other's company, something lingered.

“Daryl?”

“Hmm?”

You could feel him move and knew he was looking down toward where your temple rested against the front of his shoulder. “I’d like to tell you about it now,” you paused for a breath, “if you still want to know.” You waited for him to ask what you were talking about but, as he tended to do, the archer surprised you.

“Ya can tell me if ya wanna talk ‘bout it. Ya don’t hafta though.”

You smiled to yourself but it faded just as quickly. “I did it to myself.” You took another deep breath before continuing, keeping your eyes on the stars in the distant sky. “My life was hard even before the end of the world. I couldn’t cope with the things that happened to me…that were done to me… so I’d find something sharp—” you heard and felt his breath hitch but you couldn’t stop now. “I’d use anything at first. Anything that could make a cut. Eventually I started using a razor blade.” You just let the words tumble out, feeling a tear slide down your cheek. You hadn’t even realized you were crying. “Everything just hurt so bad and it was the only way I could handle it all. It was the only thing that kept the pain at bay. I know it doesn’t make sense but I just… I needed…”

You felt Daryl shift and quickly found yourself pressed against his chest, his arm around your back while his other hand pressed against the back of your head. He had hugged you before but this? This was different. He didn’t say anything but you already knew that he wasn’t good with words, especially when it came to expressing emotion. So he was offering you this comfort.

And you accepted it without a second thought, crying hard while your hands fisted the material of his leather vest. The more you trembled, the tighter he held you. It was as if he was trying to keep you from shaking apart but somehow you knew that even if you did, he would pick up the pieces and put you together again.

After a long while, your tears had all but stopped, leaving you a sniffling, tired mess in his arms. He didn’t seem to care but had loosened his hold slightly and was rubbing small circles over your back while you collected yourself.

Now came the shame. “I’m sorry.” You managed quickly while you pulled away from him. His hands hovered for a moment like you would fall apart again any moment but he soon let them fall onto his knees.

“What for?”

You could see him trying to catch your gaze from the corner of your eye as you wiped angrily at your face. “I know what I did was stupid.”

“It weren’t stupid, Y/N.” Daryl said softly. You remembered when he had used that same softness when he had first seen the proof of your self mutilation. You nodded but didn’t say anything for a while. Eventually, you went back to staring at the stars, even though you could feel him still staring at you.

“I don’t hate them, you know.” You finally said. With a sigh, you braved a glance at him. He was still watching you, expression unreadable but not hard. “My scars.” Daryl nodded for you to continue. “I had a lot of battles and they are proof of that but… I won.” You looked away and shrugged with a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “I’m still here.”

“M’glad.” He replied quickly, drawing your gaze back to him. “That you’re still here.”

You smiled again. It was small but this time, it was genuine. “Me too.” You watched each other for a few moments and you couldn’t help but notice him draw his bottom lip in between his teeth to gnaw at it. As you opened your mouth to ask if he was okay, he pushed himself off the step to stand.

“C’mon.” Daryl jerked his head toward your front door. Your brow knitted in confusion but you stood and crossed the small distance to the door.

“Daryl?”

“I wanna show ya somethin’.” He answered when his name had barely left your lips. Daryl reached in front of you to pull open the screen door and motioned for you to enter first. You could hear the deep, steadying breath he took as he followed you inside and began closing your door. “Ya trusted me with yours. I wanna trust ya with mine.”

#murda writes #daryl dixon fanfic #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon #daryl dixon x reader #the walking dead #daryl dixon x y/n #daryl dixon x you #the walking dead daryl dixon #Spotify

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prismatoxic · 2 months

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hi, i'm tox! i'm 28, trans, gay, and my pronouns are he/him. i'm a weird little queer who likes video games, animation, pop-punk music, animals, and making boys kiss.

i'm an artist and author but i stripped all my old art from this blog recently, so there's not much here now. i love to roleplay but i'm also a mess about consistently replying. i adore worldbuilding, meta analysis, and studying my faves under a microscope like they're bugs.

i have a bunch of original characters and they might come up from time to time; i'm also in a fair number of fandoms, like persona 4/5, metal gear solid, gravity falls, star trek, and a bunch of others.

however, of note, my current hyperfocus is dungeon meshi, and my otp for that is laios and chilchuck. i'll be sharing a lot of that.

i'm extremely invested in fandom politics and have no patience for people who try to police the fictional tastes or art of others. i'm also pro-kink, so even irl, as long as no one is being hurt against their will i will defend their right to do whatever freaky shit they're into. with that in mind, i don't want to interact with minors. please don't follow or message me if you're under 18.

i love talking to people and making friends but i'm also introverted and anxious, so keep that in mind. additionally i have a pasta strainer for a brain and will absolutely forget to reply to messages sometimes. if we're mutuals, you're free to ask for my discord!

anyway *hands you a doodlechuck*

#tox.txt #finally made a new pinned hi

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lumine-no-hikari · 3 months

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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #62

I said that I might go over some more techniques that I like to use in order to keep my memories and emotions in check. Today I made use of one, so I figured I might as well go over how it works.

I did dishes today, which might not seem like a huge accomplishment at first glance, but given that one of my ribs is out of place on the right side, doing anything that moves the right shoulder typically generates a lot of pain for me; I have to be very careful of how I move, or else it'll start to feel like someone is trying to tear my shoulder blade and my collarbone right out of my body.

Today I was having a bit less pain than usual, so I decided to do the dishes. They've been piling up, and I wanna cook something soon, and it's easier to cook things if the sink is empty, because then I can just put things in there without worrying about it becoming overcrowded. Also, if you're making pasta, the sink has to be empty and scrubbed down so that you can put the pasta strainer on the bottom without worrying about things getting icky.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of trauma when it comes to doing house chores. So if I'm not very careful about keeping my memories in check, my brain will start to wander over to the past, and memories of being screamed at for not doing a good enough job will creep into my mind. The memory of my mother evaluating my work and then berating me for it still looms over me whenever I do anything related to cleaning my house, and if I'm not careful, the feeling of tension will make me forget that I'm not in that world anymore. No one here cares if I miss a speck of dust on the carpet while vacuuming. No one here cares if they find a spot of hard water or even a speck of food on a plate that I washed; they'll just put it back into the sink to be washed again like sane, healthy people - WITHOUT accusing me of being an "ungrateful little fuck" who "is trying to give the whole house botulism" and threatening to send me back to my father's house so that my stepmother can "beat my ass into shape".

As you might guess, housework is very triggering for me. But I can't just not do it. So that means I have to find a way to keep my brain's adrenaline response from going haywire. And make no mistake, I will get an adrenaline response, because my body still remembers the time when nothing I ever did was good enough (even if it was "clean enough", I could always do it "faster" or "more efficiently", and just… ugh… I couldn't win in those days…).

But just because you get an adrenaline response doesn't necessarily mean you have to allow it to rule you. If you know that one is gonna come up, then there's a variety of things you can do to keep it in check and function through it.

The basic premise is that when the adrenaline response begins, the amygdala essentially shuts down the higher thinking parts of the brain in favor of prioritizing one's survival instincts. Anything that one does often enough can end up becoming hard-wired into one's instinctual behavior. So if, for example, you have to fight often in order to survive, the motions eventually become second nature - hard-wired into our instincts so that we don't have to think about it in order to do it with the kind of automaticity required to minimize any hesitation that might kill us. This is precisely why the amygdala will shut down the brain's higher functions; it diverts all resources to itself in order to maximize its speed and efficiency, because the brain has only a limited amount of CPU, so to speak; it can't do a whole lot at once.

Now, normally, if an adrenaline response is unwarranted, the hippocampus (a part of the brain that deals with things like memory encoding and retrieval, and a handful of other stuff) will step up and say, "Yo, come on now, cut it out." And then the amygdala is supposed to be all like, "Oh snap! My bad! Sorry, B! I'll go right back to chillin'."

Unfortunately, for those of us with trauma, we have this giant, beefy amygdala that operates on a hair trigger, and a small, underdeveloped hippocampus that can do fuck-all about it. This is because adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones, fun fun) are actively neurotoxic; if you live in a situation where you have stress hormones coursing through your body all the time, they will break down other parts of the brain while the over-used amygdala gets super strong and sensitized. Yay, neuroscience, I guess.

So, when one is triggered to the point of being in an adrenaline state, higher functions such as "logical thinking", "empathy", "language processing", "critical thinking", "emotional regulation" and all that fun stuff… these are the first things that the amygdala will toss right out the damn window. This is not a "willpower" thing. It's not a "moral failing". This is basic human biology. It is chemistry and physics. Thinking like a person can "willpower" themselves out of an adrenaline activation is like thinking they can stab themselves in the neck and "willpower" themselves to not bleed out. It's just not how this stuff works.

So for me, in order to survive in the world I was raised in, my instincts became "dissociate" or "lash out in the same way that my caregivers used to lash out at me". These became my instincts because I've either witnessed them or have had to do them countless times. It is literally ground into my brain wiring now. If I'm not very careful, my body will do these things with an automaticity that I have little control over and very much do not like, even though these things are no longer the appropriate thing to do in any of my situations anymore.

…For you, it's combat. It's eliminating the enemy quickly and with prejudice. You have had no choice but to do these things countless times in order to stay alive, so by now, it's ground into your brain wiring. So for someone like you, if you get sufficiently adrenaline-activated, your body is simply going to do the thing that it knows, and the whole time, your awareness is only going to be partially there as you go through the motions of the neural pathway you've been forced to blaze thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times, even if that's not the appropriate thing to do in a given situation.

…Complex PTSD is SUPER ANNOYING like that. It's absolute fucking garbage. It's like doing an involuntary time travel to your worst possible memories anytime you get stressed out. There's not a whole lot to be done with it other than to manage it, and fortunately, there are LOTS of ways to manage it. You can grind new instincts into your amygdala through deliberately practicing better things, and you can keep choosing the new thing until your brain has no choice but to prune away the connections of the old response. It takes years to do (because it took years to build those neural pathways to begin with), but it's work worth doing.

So, nowadays, when I gotta do housework, I will first weaken my amygdala by putting on tunes and singing as loudly as I can. I'll explain how this works:

Remember when I said that a brain has only limited CPU? It really can only do a few things at once. Singing forces us to activate the speech and language centers of the brain, as well as the creative centers, audio processing centers, and fine motor coordination centers (most people don't think about this, but the coordination required to move the mouth and tongue to speak is absolutely fucking insane). It also forces a person to be intentional and deliberate about their breath; one cannot sing well without being very mindful about breathing deeply and keeping the airways open. If you'll recall, I talked about why breath is important in my previous letter. Singing truly is the most perfect tool for preventing adrenaline activation and flashbacks.

So I'll do the dishes, and my amygdala is gonna try being all like, "ohhh, here we go again; we're about to get our ass handed to us, better sound ALL the alarms before we get got," because that's what it does every goddamn time. Except, I'm already gonna be belting out "City Ruins - Rays of Light" from Nier:Automata, and so my amygdala is not going to have the resources it needs to overpower everything else, because I'm forcing my higher functions to remain active and keeping my breath under control:

youtube

I wonder if you noticed the parts where I suddenly became aware that I am recording myself and quavered. I posted it anyway, because it doesn't have to be perfect to be worthwhile. This video should be proof enough that you don't have to be good at singing in order to use this coping skill.

So, I'm sometimes still left with a vaguely uneasy feeling while I do the tasks (this is unpleasant, but manageable), but at very least, my amygdala won't be able to hijack the rest of my brain in service to a narrative that no longer exists, for the purpose of keeping me safe from threats that are no longer present. I like to think that this bit of brain hackery is pretty swanky! Don't you think so, too?

I think that's all I've got for writing today. I had a lovely visitor at my house - a very dear friend of mine - who needed a safe place to help him deal with a situation he's having. I won't get into the details. But I am glad that my house is a safe place where those who are having a difficult time feel like they can go to get a bit of reprieve. I thought I was going to go to the grocery today, but I think I'll do that tomorrow instead.

Remember that you're loved, and please stay safe.

You'll hear from me again soon, I promise.

Your friend, Lumine

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