#nearly wrote kidney instead of kindness | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

koushisatori · 3 years

Text

All you have to do is ask

It’s me again! This isn’t beta-read yet, but I’ll do so tomorrow after lunch!! But i need to get this out of my drafts asap and...well, here you go!! Edit: 16.11.,13:10: I beta’ed it now and weeded out dumb mistakes (and made new ones, probably ) ! ♡ ～('▽^人)

oikawa x f!reader

genre: small bit of angst, fluff

warnings: someone kinda trying to force themselves onto you??

word count: 3.4k

note: this was supposed to be a drabble, now look at what it turned out to be </3</blockquote>

____________________________________________________

Tooru was sure that he had saved at least thousands of people in his last life to deserve you liking him back

you didn’t play ‘’unreachable’’ but he had to out in some work for you

especially with his fan club being all over him all the damn time,

but you never gave him any reason to doubt your intentions with him which is why he took wooing you very seriously

both of you actually spend a lot of time by just talking and getting to know each other due to that

for example: he liked taking you on cute little and spontaneous dates on volleyball-free afternoons and would then walk you home after

or on lunch breaks that you (at first) spend with him alone

(sometimes he waits at your classroom door to pick you up if it’s manageable for him - aka if he’s not swarmed by people with confession letters)

later you both are consequently joined by Iwa, Mattsun, and Makki

the last two loved teasing him with their ‘fun facts for lunch’

’’(Y/N)?’’ you hear Makki sing even before you can see any of the other three. next to you, Tooru groans in advance

’’Did you know that ‘Kawa can reach a g’’ as soon as he’s eye to eye with an insect larger than your pinky finger?’’ the strawberry haired boy says, mattsun next to him wagging his eyebrows

the professional that you are easily suppresses a grin, you merely chuckle amused

’’Who isn’t afraid of bugs larger than that? There are way smaller things that could kill you!’’ you exclaim with wide eyes ‘’...and I’ll gladly channel all my bravery and…’’ you look around before leaning forward, the two boys following your example, intrigued by the secretive expression on your face ‘’…annihilate everything and everyone that might scare Tooru or make fun of hi’’ – ‘’WOAH, (Y/N)-‘’

they had tried to flirt with you just to fuck with Oikawa (so with no real intention) but they had to realize rather quickly that this was a hopeless task – you couldn’t tell that people were flirting with you unless they spelled it out

(literally that one meme; you: ’’were you flirting with me, Tooru?’’ Tooru: did for the past half-year, thanks for noticing tho <3’’)

Don’t worry you know the setter well enough by now to be able to tell when he does, and really - only Tooru’s flirting matters to you

it also makes you blush furiously, now that you truly get it, but we’re not talking about that

Iwaizumi took you to the side one day while you were waiting for Oikawa to finish his training

he asked you sternly if you were sure that you would be able to handle days, weekends, and sometimes weeks in which Tooru would unintentionally prioritize Volleyball over you

said, that you had to find a balance on the fine line that was leaving him be with his training and stopping him from overexertion (and really ruining his knee)

after assuring that yeah, you would because you genuinely liked him, volleyball obsession and all, and that wanted to be with him, Iwa let go of any rest reservations he had had against you and joined the general teasing

Okay, moving on

as soon as his and your interest in each other became clear, you kept a clear distance from other males (and females, ‘yer that desired, as you should btw)

if they pushed it, you unmistakable stated that you’re not interested in other advances because you liked someone

Like??? Oikawa really just had to say the magic words at this point, you'd say yes in an instant

for god's sake tf is he waiting for?!!

despite you being obvious with your interest in the setter and disinterest in everyone else regarding this you constantly get approached by admirers

some people need it spelled out that you mean what you say, honestly

A thing Tooru liked so much about you was your kindness, but it also was the reason that - as already said - some people still thought they might have a chance

it’s not your fault, your natural charm is like...the 8th wonder of the world!!

due to your impeccable behavior and perfect grades, you obviously were the teachers’ favorite student to pick to help out other students

cue to: oh, look!! you're chosen again *sigh*

up until now, the tutoring never bugged Tooru too much, it was more like an itch he couldn’t scratch

but usually, they weren’t after school (giving up your lunch break, you’re a hero) and never awoke any rumors

your latest ’student’ seemed to think that he was close to ’’winning you over’’, though, that you were secretly but undeniably head over heels for him by now

’’I’ve heard that he plans on asking (Y/N) out today!’’ - ‘’No way! Even with Oikawa-Senpai obviously being interested in her?’’ - ‘’Yes!’’ - ‘’Death wish~’’

Tooru had to hear it in between classes and while he trusted you (and the last comment made him chuckle a bit), this was not the case for that guy

You: go home after class, Tooru, I need to give another tutoring session :(

of course, he wanted to hear none of that, especially with the hushed words fresh in his mind

meanwhile, you vividly imagined his annoyed expression reading it and the cute little huffing sound; you couldn’t help but smile softly to yourself </3

Tooru Σ>―(〃°ω°〃)♡→: I’ll wait for you, (Y/N)-chan, Iwa-chan and me wanted to try out something anyway (^.~)☆

Tooru Σ>―(〃°ω°〃)♡→: also, I waited to try out the sweets at the patisserie for too long to not eat my weight in cake twice today, so you better hurry if you want me to share with you

His answer clearly stating: I will wait for you, don’t take too long

Okay, maybe he was a bit jealous

that this guy gets a reward – another hour with you alone - for being stupid ?? it obviously fed into a crazy fantasy and it was unfair

Oikawa reminded himself that he had no reason to be jealous, especially since he had yet to ask you out and make it official

(it had to be perfect and cute just like you, okay? no rom-com was able to prepare him for the real thing!!)

training – for the first time in years – dragged on endlessly

his mind kept wandering, and after the first 5 volleyballs to the head, courtesy of a very annoyed Iwaizumi, said one took matters into his own hands dragging his sulking best friend out of the gym

‘’If you’re jealous, Shittykawa, then fucking confess already.’’ Iwaizumi says with his no-bullshit voice, letting go of Tooru's jacket.

While it was obvious that Oikawa is, in fact, super fucking jealous, he chuckles and puts on an easy smile. ‘’Silly Iwa-chan! I’m not- OUCH!’’ The brunet yelps, holding the back of his head and looking at his childhood friend with a pout.

‘’First of all, fuck you, Shittykawa, for thinking I’m falling for your dumb act.’’ The ace growls, narrowing his eyes. ’’(Y/N) is a beautiful girl. Of course, Extras try to get close to and confess to her, you morron.’’ The spiky-haired let’s out a tsk-sound, seeing Tooru’s wide eyes. ‘’I at least hope you are aware that she is waiting for you to ask her out officially, right? It’s literally on you to put your foot over the line between a girl friend and your girlfriend. But if you take too long, she’ll eventually be fed up with waiting…so why in hell are you stalling?’’ Iwaizumi huffs, crossing his buff arms over his chest.

With a shrug, Oikawa looks up to the sky before his gaze travels down to settle on his feet, shuffling from side to side. ‘’I’m scared that making it official will do more harm than good, Hajime. She never said something else but…is she really fine with me forgetting basic things over Volleyball? Or will she leave me after a while like my last girlfriend? Because she realized Damn, he’s really into volleyball. I also don’t want to hurt (Y/N) by asking her to be mine and then…being me and screw everything up again.’’ Tooru whispers quietly, trying to hide the vulnerability while intentionally avoiding his best friends eyes.

‘’You’re dumb, Tooru.’’

Well…that’s not what he was expecting Iwaizumi to do or say. A punch against his upper arm or chest maybe, or a kick to the shin – always with love but still painful enough to get the message across. But not a soft-voiced statement paired with a sigh.

‘’I hate...’’ Iwaizumi says, waving his hand up and down. ‘’...why do I have to do...the emotionally charged pep talk.’’ He grumbles, pulling his hand over his face before he looks up directly into Oikawa’s insecure but also curious eyes.

’’You might not be aware of it, but things already are different compared to last time. (Y/N) does not just accept your passion, but supports you fully. With the amount of time she spends on the bench doing her homework and cheering for everyone when we do training's matches, while remembering our schedules and matches, she’s practically an inofficial second manager. By any means, she’s a perfect match to your madness, it’s scary.’’ he jokes, thinking of all the small things you do for his best friend that - in the end - make him trust you even more.

‘’But…what might be more important to you right now is that you’re not behaving like last time as well. You still are so freaking stupid and overexert yourself…but you check up on her whenever you take a water break. If it's asking in person or sending her a message. You make sure to have at least two free afternoons where you spend time with each other, which is two days more than you did last time by the way. You have that stupidly dopey smile on your face when you see Y/N. I mean…nothing ever breaks your focus after you set foot on the field and yet here we are, standing outside because all you do is mope around instead of playing!’’ The spiky-haired player huffs.

After a moment of silence, Tooru cries out an ‘’Iwa-chan, you do love me!’’ while draping himself over his best friend. ‘’Oi, Trashykawa!’’ the other protests with a fake angry voice, yet hugging the other back for a second before he pushes him off nonetheless.

‘’Okay, now move your ass, the pinning you two are doing is a pain to witness.’’ Iwa says accusatory before going back into the gym, leaving Oikawa to make a decision.

Hurrying through the gym to the changing rooms, Tooru nearly makes it out unseen until Yahaba is half asking, half yelling from the other side of the hall. ‘’Oikawa-san, where are you going?’’

With a wide grin and his signature peace sign (it’s for his own emotional support here, okay, his nerves are killing him), the Captain turns around to announce ‘’I’m finally getting myself a girlfriend!’’ before he quickly leaves his hollering teammates.

(Oikawa was quite sure to hear Mattsun yell something like ‘All of you! Pay up!’ and Kyoutani muttering an ‘I’m leaving.’ somewhere in his vicinity.)

5 Minutes later, the brunet looks through all the classrooms in the hallway you should be in, teaching a good for nothing that was adamant about trying to steal you away from him. Tsk.

Right after turning around the corner, Tooru hears a dull thud, followed up by a soft gasp that made his insides churn uncomfortably. That it’s immediately followed by a low, deep voice doesn’t help at all with calming Oikawas heart beat. He slowly creeps closer to the slightly ajar door to the room with the treacherous sounds. The soft whimper following was unmistakably you, and his heart suddenly felt like it was on the verge of breaking for a second.

Should he turn around and leave? Perhaps Iwaizumi was right with you being tired of waiting for him. Maybe you were tired and accepted someone else?

Luckily, a gruff inner voice growls – surprisingly sounding like his best friend – and mentally slaps him. You never gave him a reason to doubt your affection! And if he had to fight for your affection then so it be! Also, you wouldn’t engage in something inappropriate out in public. There was a 99,9% chance of him misinterpreting everything due to his own insecurities, and you being uncomfrotable right now. Unacceptable.

With his resolve strengthened again, the setter finally takes the last steps over to the door. Standing there, he finally could understand the words being spoken. Oikawa suddenly had a presentiment of what was happening inside.

Meanwhile, you were struggling unceasingly. ’’It…it is flattering that you…that you like me, honestly!! And…there are surely many other girls that would feel honored to be confessed to by you, but I like someone else, I’m sorry. Please, accept my choice!’’ you say, damming your voice for shaking and underminding your own statement.

’’Ah, ah, pretty girl, it’s not nice to lie.’’ the guy in front of you chuckles. The usage of such a pet name makes you cringe in disgust. There’s only one person allowed to give you tese kind of names. ‘’I know you like me, too. You with your cute little blush when you talk to me and lingering soft touches-‘’

A scandalized sound of protest leaves your lips. You were just short of stomping your foot. ’’I did no such thing! I-’’ But as before, your words meet a seemingly deaf ear.

’’I will be the best boyfriend a pretty girl like you could ever wish for.’’ Moving closer, the guy slowly backs you up until you meet the chalkboard behind you. ’’Come on, give in.’’ He murmurs, hitting his hand against the board next to your head, which forces a scared whimper out of you. ‘’I’m all you need.’’

Stepping into the room, Tooru couldn’t believe his eyes and ears,. The blood in his veins slowly but surely starts to boil.

’’Please, let me leave! I told you, I am not interested. I am with-’’ You plea softly, one hand pressed against the guys’ chest to stop him from coming any closer, – did he really try to kabedon you against the chalkboard? - while your other was hidden from his view. Even though you were trying your best, the distance between the two of you was insultingly sparse, the guy making up for the lack bodily closeness in general by leaning forward enough for your faces to be separated by only a few inches. You could probably feel his breath on your face. Tooru really felt like punching the guy.

’’What’s so special about the pretty boy anyway? He has many girls running after him to choose from, let me have you. I’ll treat you better! I have so much free time and I would spend all of it on you. Let me take you out for a coffee, pretty girl, or dinner. Hm? I’ll prove my words directly. I mean…he hasn’t even asked you out! It’s unfair how he is keeping you on the back burner, stringing you along. To you…’’ suddenly the boy moves closer, lowering his voice to a sultry murmur ‘’…and to m-‘’

’’That’s enough.’’ Oikawa says, his tone icy, sending shivers down the other male's spine. You on the other hand…

’’Tooru…’’ you whisper, relief evident, as you watch him move closer to you as fast as humanly possible. Yet you still aren’t able to reach out. ’’Please, Tooru…’’

Upon hearing your soft whimper, his brown eyes follow yours to your other hand, realizing that said one is still in the firm grip of the guys' right. At that a clearly dangerous growl leaves the usually sweet brunet. ‘’If you don’t let go of her in the next two seconds and leave her be for good in 5, I can and will break your arm.’’ Oikawa threatens with an overly sweet, yet terrifying smile, wrapping his own hands around the guy's wrist, blunt nails pressing painfully into the sensitive flesh on the inside.

With a hiss, the guy finally pulls back his hand. It allows you to seek shelter behind the tall setters back. Your fingers tightly hold onto his shirt while you peek at the other from behind him. ’’Aww, come on, pretty boy,…’’ he says, voice provoking, the words clearly meant to degrade Oikawa. ’’…let me have some fun with sweets over there, and when I’m done you can have her all to yourself.’’ To top of his words, he winks at you.

With the way he had tensed up the first moment, you half expect Tooru to suit the action to the word, and really break his arm...instead, Oikawa looks the other dead in the eye, while saying ’’Hey, (Y/N)-chan,? There’s that really sickening wretched smell in here, it’s kind of painful. I’d like to take you somewhere nice, will you get your things?’’

You hastily nod and do as you are told while Tooru continues to stare the other down, keeping his attention away from you and using the slighty height difference to his advantage. The moment you reach him, Oikawa finally lets go of the others wrist, grabbing yours instead. You tug him to the door as quick as possible, when suddenly life found its way back into the other.

‘’Hey, what did you mean?’’ he asks, half angry, half clueless. Unable to accept his loss.

Oikawa turns back one last time, a smirk settling on his lips while his eyes twinkle with amusement. ‘’I said, that a mouth breather as pitiful as you are is a disgrace to be in the vicinity of someone as amazing as her.’’ And with that, you both finally leave.

(Y/N)-chan…are you alright?’’ Tooru asks once you left the school grounds. His thumb drawing little circles on the back of your hand.

You nod before you eventually look up, worrying your lip. ’’Thank you. I…I was really scared. Even though I'm sure that he would have done something…something…’’ you swallow down the nasty words, shuddering slightly. ’’I’m glad you came to save me, Tooru.’’ You finally settle on, pink coloring your cheeks. Beckoning him to lean down a bit by waggling your finger, you softly craddle his face and press a kiss to his cheek. The blush becoming more intense now with every passing moment.

Before you can pull back your hands, though, his had already found purchase on yours, keeping them - and you - in place. Everything about this moment felt right to him. Maybe now was the right time. ’’Pretty girl...’’ he murmurs, assessing your reaction. (He notes, pleased, that your blush intensifies, and your smile turns all giddy. He needs you to forget about that douchebag calling you that. He would repeat it until all you remembered was his voice using it.) ‘’I kind of really, really, really want to kiss you right now…’’ He whispers, the warmth of his cheeks telling him that he was most likely sporting a blush similar to yours. ’’…Will you be mine? Will you allow me to hold your hand? To kiss you silly? To steal bites of your food and make up for it with compliments and as many cuddles as you wish? Will you allow me to brag about you being my girlfriend and force you to wear my jersey to all my matches now and in the future?’’ His eyes didn’t leave yours for a second. He enjoyed watching yours light up as if he had just hung the stars in the night sky, or as if he had made you the best present a girl could wish for.

’’Tooru…I thought you’d never ask…’’ you say with a smile so affectionate that it makes him feel mushy and warm all over. And then he finally closes the gap.

The moment your lips meet for their first kiss is better than anything he had ever imagined. It isn’t a firework exploding, nor an unbalanced fight of passion and dominance. Instead, it’s gentle. A loving flow and exchange, wrapping you both in a blanket of warmth. A bubble just for the two of you. He understood what Iwaizumi meant with different, because – even though this relationship just started – he knows, that with you he had found a completely new world of comfort and love. Being with you already felt like coming home.

#nearly wrote kidney instead of kindness #oh (y/n) baby your kidneys turn me on so bad #wtf tooru!?#sfdhdjk sorry #anyway #Haikyuu imagines #haikyu headcanons #haikyuu x reader #aoba josai x reader #oikawa x reader #oikawa x you #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#did i use the word kabedon a verb? yep i did #is this correct? idk idc #i think this is to be categorized as dialogue heavy <3 #realized i made a grammatical mistake in the tags #ultimate certificate for dumbness <3333 #haikyuu scenarios

97 notes · View notes

thebeautyoffanfics · 3 years

Text

se!saeran x gn!reader

a/n: I’m really really sorry for taking so long on requests,,, I’m working on them slowly, but I’m in a sort of weird mental state, so I wrote this mainly for comfort. Thanks for understanding ^^

Pfff, as i’m writing this, my internet has cut like 6 times- honestly i’m just trying to write comfortttttt

warnings: negative thoughts/feelings

word count: 1,869

Your stomach ached, as you wrapped your arms around your torso. So many thoughts flooded your head that it was beginning to make you feel physically ill. Your brain was screaming at you- things you should be doing, things you regretted doing, how lazy you were being, how tired you felt, how overwhelming every little feeling, sound, light, and texture was to your senses. Yet, all you could do was sit there. You wanted to cry, but, despite everything you felt, you were… numb. Where was the point in crying? It was best to accept everything as it was.

Though you told yourself it was best to accept such a defeat, there was a part of you that was well aware that you were close to some sort of breaking point. All day was spent doing things- all day for several weeks now, you spent your time working. Working, worrying, running errands. Still, every day seemed to bring another thing to do- another problem- more drama, none of which you could control. Everything was out of your control.

You nearly jumped at hearing your phone ring. Grabbing it, you were half-ready to give some sort of curt answer, before realizing that it was just Saeran. Holding the phone to your ear, you gave the most cheerful answer you could.

“Hello?”

“Hey, (Y/N)... I was just… wondering how you were.”

Of course, you weren’t doing your best. Knowing that, but also knowing that Saeran probably couldn’t afford to bother himself with your problems, you told him “I’m pretty good. How about you?”

“I’m fine… my stupid brother went into town, so I was thinking about walking to your place. Not like I… really feel like seeing you in particular, I’m just….”

“It’s alright. You don’t need an excuse to come visit me, you know? I’m decent, and I’ve probably got ice cream in the fridge.”

Saeran paused on the other line, and you could vaguely hear the sound of boots zipping up. “Right then. See you in a few.”

“Okay. Love you, see you in a few.”

“............” He whispered, despite the fact that no one was in his home nor yours, “love you too.”

The phone call ended, and you sat back, staring at the ceiling. Saeran was comforting to be around, sure, but… were you going to be comforting for him? You had no energy left. Just making yourself talk on the phone felt like too much work, you honestly just wanted to sleep… sleep for a long time. Maybe a month of two. A year or… ten.

“Alas, life goes on,” You whispered to yourself, attempting to lighten the mood. Forcing yourself to stand, you walked to the bathroom and grabbed a hairbrush, deciding to make yourself somewhat decent for Saeran.

You glanced at the mirror, pulling the brush through your tangled hair. The knots were tough, probably due to running your hands stressfully through your hair so often, and you watched as your face contorted in pain.

“You’re so… ugly,” You sighed to yourself, continuing to brush your hair. “You can’t even handle brushing your hair… it’s not hard. It doesn’t hurt that bad… you’re fine, you know? Just suck it up...”

Sighing, you tossed the hairbrush back onto the counter, then fixed your hair a bit with your hands. “Talking to yourself, huh… not even for a fun conversation. Just… complaining.”

You began your walk towards the kitchen, aiming to grab some medicine to calm your upset stomach. As you stepped, the thoughts continued- upsetting, self-deprecating thoughts, on top of impulsive ones. It was all… too much. Even as you swallowed the pain relieving pill, so many thoughts ran through your brain. Throw this, hit that, do this, clean that. You wanted to pull out your freshly-brushed hair, as you instead opted to chug the water bottle held in your hand.

“Giving your kidneys a boost?” A familiar voice asked, a joking tone laced in the comment. You nearly jumped again, calling yourself lucky for having just finished drinking the water.

“I drink plenty of water, actually. Maybe not today, but I usually do.”

You gently wrapped an arm around the tall boy, feeling him lightly return it, before the both of you sat back quickly. “Saeyoung always tells me that you should drink water every day. Not just when you feel like it.”

“And does Saeyoung follow that?”

Saeran laughed, “does Phd Pepper count?”

“Nope. So, his comments are invalid.”

“I didn’t take them seriously to begin with, sooo…”

You smiled, tossing the empty bottle into the recycling bin, before looking back over at Saeran. “So? What brings you here? Ice cream, a movie, popcorn?”

He shrugged, grabbing a bowl and a spoon, then making his way towards your freezer. He took out the ice cream container, before preparing himself a bowl. “...Want any?” He asked, not bothering to look at you as he did so.

“No, thank you though.”

"Sure… it’s your ice cream, so you don’t really need to thank me.”

After having made his bowl of ice cream, you found yourself resting next to Saeran on the couch. A comfortable silence ensued, and you finally felt at some sort of peace. Though your eyes were shut, at feeling a gaze on you, you peeked them open, catching a glimpse of Saeran as he quickly turned his head. Sitting up a bit, you smiled at his dismissiveness. He’d die before admitting it, but he had been looking at you… you felt lucky. He could look at you without disgust- something not even you could do to yourself.

“What’re you thinking?” You asked after a few minutes. Though the silence was enjoyable, his voice wasn’t something you could complain about either. Honestly, all you wanted to do was hear his sweet voice talk about whatever he pleased, and maybe fall asleep to him talking. The last part was less likely, but-

“You’re acting dumb,” He muttered, turning and shoving a spoonful of ice cream into your mouth. Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, as you noted the pout on his face. You swallowed the ice cream, your heart rate picking up, worrying that you did something wrong.

“What do you mean?”

“See, you’re already getting defensive. It’s,” He paused a bit, and you didn’t bother speaking, knowing it was hard for him to put things to words. He didn’t want to seem too worried, although it was clear he cared. “It’s weird. You haven’t…” His voice grew quiet, as a pink spread across his face, “texted me as much. And I’ve had to initiate half the calls- and even then, you sometimes don’t pick up. And then, your texts are all quick and boring. I’m not… the best at picking up on things, but I can tell something’s wrong. So, just tell me. That’s what I’m here for, you idiot.”

You sat there, unable to form any words. You hadn’t thought that anything seemed wrong. You were… your normal self, right? He’d been worried just because you… couldn’t keep up with your own mind. His concern was your fault, despite the fact that all you wanted to do was focus on him. To help him. This wasn’t help-

“Stop. Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking. I don’t like that look on your face. You don’t need to force yourself or anything, just… I’m... here. It’s not a problem or a bother or anything.”

Like that, so many of those negative thoughts were contradicted. Your head hurt a bit, as you felt your heart ache. Tears filled your eyes, as everything finally came crashing down. Letting out a sob you were sure was ugly, you felt Saeran tense up next to you. Maybe he wasn’t expecting such a reaction- maybe it was overwhelming for him- still, despite the fact that he could turn away, despite the fact that he didn’t need to care, he wrapped his arms tightly around you. He began to rock you back and forth a bit, petting your head gently, as you had often done for him.

Normally, Saeran struggled to start physical contact. He struggled to deal with it, always needing you to slowly initiate touch. He’d gotten better about it, but just having him hold you so suddenly and so tightly, so comfortingly, made your heart ache further. He’d worked so hard, and, in that moment, you were so proud of him. You felt so much love for him that you were sure your heart was going to burst. And, the way he was treating you made you sure that, even if it wasn’t you yourself, there was someone out there who loved you… Saeran was that someone.

After a few minutes of Saeran holding you as you cried, you found the energy to sit back, wiping your eyes, almost embarrassed of the mess you were sure you’d become. He reached out, wiping some tears for you, before squishing your face slightly. His face was red, eyes slightly watery, as he made direct eye contact.

“Don’t hide your feelings from me… you convince me to tell you things, so you should tell me. If I’m comfortable around you… then, you… should be comfortable around me. It’s not like I have any room to judge you.”

Taking a shaky breath, you leaned back into the hug, the side of your face squishing against his chest. “Can I just… sit here for a bit…? Tell me about your day, please.”

Saeran hesitated, before shifting the two of you, leaning against the couch so that you’d also be reclining a bit. Once settled, he took in a strangely calm breath, before speaking. “Well… when I woke up, Saeyoung said he was making breakfast. It smelled bad though, and I realized he’d used Phd Pepper instead of water in the pancake mix… which, I guess was his way of saying ‘hey, Saeran, you make breakfast today’. So, I made normal pancakes. Actually, I put some… little chocolate chips in them, like the kind we got last time we ate breakfast-”

His voice continued on, as you listened to him describe every detail of his day. A sort of calmness enveloped your heart, along with exhaustion enveloping your body. There in Saeran’s arms, everything felt… safe. Nothing could hurt you, not even the problems, drama, and work that you had just panicked over. There… was no rush to do things. If you took things slowly, maybe… just maybe, it’d all work out. With those thoughts in mind, and Saeran’s voice in the background, you finally fell asleep.

---

“(Y/N)? Are you even listening?” Saeran questioned, lifting a hand from your back. As he did so, he glanced at your face, before freezing up. Realizing you were asleep, he put his hand back, sitting back in place. “They’re… asleep,” He thought, a bright blush growing on his face. Despite himself, he smiled slightly, proud that you were comfortable enough with him to fall asleep on him. He rubbed a hand up and down your back, beginning to realize how sleepy he was. As a few more moments passed, the only sound Saeran could hear being your gentle breathing, he found himself drifting off to sleep as well.

#i think secret end saeran may be my favorite.....#i didn't write him as tsundere as he's usually interpreted but-#it's still saeran <3 #x reader #gn!reader #x gn!reader #oneshot #saeran choi #se!saeran #saeran choi x reader #mystic messenger #mysmes #mystic messenger x reader #mysmes x reader

46 notes · View notes

bookishable · 4 years

Text

deathly hallows book moments

warning: this one’s a rollercoaster ride of emotions, read at your own risk.

‘the idea of a teenage dumbledore was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid hermione or a friendly blast-ended skrewt.’

“i don’t think you’re a waste of space.”

‘he felt like asking them to show a little more respect for his privacy as they all began stripping off with impunity, clearly much more at ease with displaying his body than they would have been with their own.’

ron: why do i have to clean my room? mrs weasley: !!! WEDDING !!! ron: theyre not getting married in my damn bedroom

“we’re coming with you. that was decided months ago—years, really.”

“if i picked up a sword right now, ron, and ran you through with it, i wouldn’t damage your soul at all.” “which would be a real comfort to me, i’m sure”

harry waking up on his birthday forgetting he was 17

“accio glasses!” although they were only around a foot away, there was something immensely satisfying about seeing them zoom towards him, at least until they poked him in the eye.

ron giving harry a book called twelve fail-safe ways to charm witches for his birthday

“i’ve learned a lot. you’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.”

‘the rest of her speech was lost; harry had got up and hugged her. he tried to put a lot of unsaid things into the hug and perhaps she understood them’

“are you planning to follow a career in magical law, miss granger?” “no i’m not, i’m hoping to do some good in the world!”

“it’s time you learned some respect!” “it’s time you earned it”

hermione: when we were little we heard stories like snow white and cinderella ron: what’s that, an illness? harry: rip me i never got read any stories

“a brutal triple murder by the bridegroom’s mother might put a bit of a damper on the wedding.”

“merlin’s beard, what is xenophilius lovegood wearing? he looks like an omelette.” excuse me why wasn’t auntie muriel like this in the film

“he used to down an entire bottle of firewhisky, then run on to the dance floor, hoist up his robes and start pulling bunches of flowers out of his—” “yes, he sounds a real charmer”

harry suggesting that xenophilius lovegood’s deathly hallows necklace is the cross-section of the head of a crumple-horned snorkack

“vot is the point of being an international quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?”

‘harry heard her mutter a suggestion as to where ron could stick his wand instead.’

harry reading lily’s letter and noticing that they wrote their g’s the same way as each other, i’m sobbing

‘the letter was an incredible treasure, proof that lily potter had lived, really lived’

KREACHER’S GODDAMN TALE

kreacher hitting mundungus over the head with a saucepan “perhaps just one more, master harry, for luck?”

“if anyone shouldn’t go, it’s harry, he’s got a ten thousand galleon price on his head—” “fine, i’ll stay here, let me know if you ever defeat voldemort, won’t you?”

‘with a twinge of regret that had nothing to do with food, harry imagined the house-elf busying himself over the steak and kidney pie that harry, ron and hermione would never eat.’

‘not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.’

the sign outside the wreckage of the potters’ house, covered with messages left for harry

the child who had the nerve to say “nice costume, mister!” to mr tom riddle the dark lord voldemort, what an icon

“after you left, she cried for a week. probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. there were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. with you gone… she’s like my sister, i love her like a sister and i reckon she feels the same way about me. it’s always been like that. i thought you knew.”

“you’ve sort of made up for it tonight, getting the sword. finishing off the horcrux. saving my life.” “that makes me sound a lot cooler than i was” “stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was, i’ve been trying to tell you that for years.”

ron single-handedly fighting off five snatchers by telling them he was stan shunpike

“he must’ve known i’d run out on you.” “no, he must’ve known you’d always want to come back.”

“i just think it’s a bit spookier if it’s midnight!” “yeah, because we really need a bit more fear in our lives”

“death’s got an invisibility cloak?” “so he can sneak up on people, sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking…”

luna decorating her bedroom ceiling with paintings of her friends (i’m not crying, you are)

POTTERWATCH

“we’re all human, aren’t we? every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”

“i’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit, and i’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.”

hagrid throwing a ‘support harry potter’ party

“the fact remains he can move faster than severus snape confronted with shampoo when he wants to”

“no! you can have me, keep me!” this book went from making me smile to shattering my heart in around three pages

‘hermione was screaming again: the sound went through harry like physical pain.’

ron’s ‘passable imitation of wormtail’s wheezy voice’

“so young, to be fighting so many.”

‘ron said, “blimey, a baby!” as if he had never heard of such a thing before.’

‘he seemed set on course to become just as reckless a godfather to teddy lupin as sirius black had been to him.’

“he was never free, never, the night that your brother died he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind. he started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn’t there… it was torture to him, if you’d seen him then, you wouldn’t say he was free.”

“i’m going to keep going until i succeed—or i die. don’t think i don’t know how this might end. i’ve known it for years.”

“i got this one for asking her how much muggle blood she and her brother have got.” “blimey, neville, there’s a time and a place for getting a smart mouth.”

“yeah, well, food’s one of the five exceptions to gamp’s law of elemental transfiguration,” said ron, to general astonishment.

“why would harry potter try to get inside ravenclaw tower? potter belongs in my house!”

‘harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice, and affection for minerva mcgonagall gushed up inside him.’

harry using the cruciatus curse on amycus in front of mcgonagall because “he spat at you”

mcgonagall dueling snape and sending a swarm of daggers at him

“where’s professor snape?” “he has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk” minerva i love you

neville throwing mandrakes over the walls

“is this the moment? OI! there’s a war going on here!” “i know, mate, so it’s now or never, isn’t it?”

‘and percy was shaking his brother, and ron was kneeling beside them, and fred’s eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.’

‘a herd of galloping desks thundered past, shepherded by a sprinting professor mcgonagall.’

harry stunned the death eater as they passed: malfoy looked around, beaming, for his saviour, and ron punched him from under the cloak. “and that’s the second time we’ve saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard!”

trelawney using crystal balls to knock out death eaters ‘with a movement like a tennis serve’

“are you a wizard, or what?”

“you must kill me.” “would you like me to do it now? or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?”

‘this cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery.’

‘he was tiny in death.’

‘he felt he would have given all the time remaining to him for just one last look at them; but then, would he ever have had the strength to stop looking?’

“we’re all going to keep fighting, harry. you know that?”

“i am sorry too, sorry i will never know him… but he will know why i died and i hope he will understand. i was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”

“until the very end”

“this is, as they say, your party.” harry had no idea what this meant; dumbledore was being infuriating.

“it is a curious thing, harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.”

“do not pity the dead, harry. pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

“of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

‘the scream was the more terrible because he had never expected or dreamed that professor mcgonagall could make such a sound.’

ron breaking voldemort’s silencing charm “he beat you!”

“i’ll join you when hell freezes over, dumbledore’s army!”

harry calling voldemort tom riddle like “yes, i dare”

‘tom riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken’ where please, movies?

‘mcgonagall had replaced the house tables, but nobody was sitting according to house anymore’

peeves’ song voldy’s gone mouldy

‘tears were sliding down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled harry with the same balm as phoenix song.’

harry FIXING HIS DAMN WAND

“i’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”

“if you’re not in gryffindor, we’ll disinherit you, but no pressure.”

albus complaining that everyone is staring and ron being like “it’s me. i’m extremely famous.”

‘the scar had not pained harry for nineteen years. all was well.’

#deathly hallows is the best book and i am not taking criticism on this #congratulations if your eyes are still dry #hp book moments #deathly hallows #harry potter books #harry potter quotes #hp textpost

73 notes · View notes

pumpkin-spice-whump-latte · 5 years

Text

Unfixable: Carlos

I didn’t really understand how fun it was to cut your own character to pieces until I wrote it.

briefly references #17: Stay With Me

might have been what was happening during #18: Muffled Scream, or at least for part of it

tagging @straight-to-the-pain because they inspired me~

content includes: VIVISECTION, descriptive gore, blood, intimate whumper, creepy whumper, noncon touching, passing out, and because I can’t seem to go a few days without it, torture

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carlos thought at first that someone had set him on fire.

He came to with a sharp, deeply violent burning in his midsection, making him gasp and squirm against the leather straps that held his ankles and wrists. There was nowhere to hide from it though; he couldn’t even curl up on himself. The only thing he could do was look down and see–

See Dr. Tillman cutting into him with a scalpel.

He let out a blood curdling scream, prompting the scientist to glance up from his work with a small smile.

“Ah, good. You’re awake.” The burning Carlos had felt had been his body trying to process the pain of something very sharp opening a bloody, fleshy line through the muscles of his abdomen. It carved it’s way down in a long diagonal line, upper right all the way down to left hip, slicing through layers of skin and muscle. His entire body tried to thrash away from the pain, back arching up as far as it could from the operating table, but the blade always followed him wherever he tried to wiggle. Soon enough the scientist had a hand down against him, forcing him to be still as he finished opening a bloody mouth where there should never have been one.

Carlos tugged at his restraints, panic gripping him and turning his blood to ice. Turning his will to live into something stronger than his common sense, and he would have torn off his own limbs or broken a damn bone if it meant getting away from the horror and pain. But with all that screaming and struggling he only succeeded in getting a gentle hand petting through his hair. Trailing blood along his forehead in little warm, drippy lines.

“Oh, shh. Shh, shhh now. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. I’m a man of science.” When Carlos met Tillman’s eyes he could see a strange glint behind them. The normally placid, detached blue was glassy, the pupils blown. There was a fire that danced behind those eyes that just made everything feel that much more Wrong.

A dread settled deep within him then. Bigger than the fear. More ancient even than pain.

Then the scientist made another incision, this time in an opposite diagonal line across the first. It made a large X across Carlos’ stomach, and then he couldn’t see those doom-bringer eyes anymore. He couldn’t see anything anymore as he threw his head back and screeched against the pain. This time he was only answered with a low, dark chuckle. Tillman was amused and Carlos actually might have laughed too. He might have laughed and laughed and laughed until he went crazy, because that seemed like a better fate than staying lucid for this. He thought that at the very least he might pass out from the agony, from the shattering knowledge that he was being cut open and couldn’t stop it, but blessed darkness never came.

A few moments later he could feel cool air rushing against a part of him that hadn’t ever been meant to feel it. He felt the four cross sections of his skin being pulled back and clamped open, so that when he dared to glance back down…

He could see himself. The inside of himself. Dark red like murder, wet and sloppy looking, and terrifyingly vulnerable.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” His words came out sharp with rage and fear. Bruised with pain. None of the monolithic dread yet but that’s because Carlos was still, in part, himself. He still had a good bit of his own fire.

Tillman only slipped two gloved fingers into the mass of his blood and guts. “You’re doing very, very good Carlos. Hang in there my boy. Wasn’t time for… For any anesthetic. You were fading fast. Had to do something.” Carlos could barely keep up with what was being said, let alone understand any of it. He was too busy feeling every soft, intimate drag of those fingers as they practically fucked into him. Some perverse imitation of a lover. All the while Tillman’s eyes held Carlos’ gaze captive, not allowing him to look away or deny this was really happening to his own body.

“Arrg… Stop! PLEASE!” His chest heaved, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and the rest of him shuddered helplessly as Tillman sank his hand further into his guts. It made a sickening squelching sound that he could somehow hear between his panting and rising sobs.

Before today he’d had no idea you could feel someone touching you inside like that. He’d never had occasion to even need to think about it. But no, no. There were nerve endings even along the deepest curve of his lower intestine, ones that only knew a song of pain and nothing else. He was learning about them today mothers and fuckers and they were singing a backup chorus to his nearly broken screams.

“You see organs… Don’t lie.” Dr. Tillman spoke above him in little more than a hushed whisper, but every word still stabbed into him like a knife. Like a surgeon’s scalpel. Like two fingers, and then five, and a hand curling oh-so-gently and carefully around something deep within him and sending a sensation of awful pressure and hammering pain.

“They may fail, eventually, but it isn’t their fault. They spend their lives as diligent, loyal subjects of the body. So fragile and yet… So strong at the same time.”

Carlos only heard this as a faint buzzing that might have been words. He couldn’t take a full breath, sucking in little gasps of air between hitching sobs as fat tears rolled down the sides of his face. His eyes were saucer wide and shining, he was burning, his whole being was a quivering mass of blood and guts and fire and it would never stop. His brain wouldn’t let him just pass–

___

When he opened his eyes again Tillman was still there. Carlos let out a moan of agony as the pain reintroduced itself (how do you do?) and as the scientist raised one gore covered finger to Carlos’ neck. How long had he even been out? A couple minutes? He swept his gaze down across his bloody chest to his lower body. Things looked basically the same. He still looked like a messy peeled fruit and he cursed his brain and body for only letting him escape this for a few minutes instead of nuking his entire consciousness till he woke up somewhere with less horror. What a bitch.

That finger–that finger that had just been inside him–traced a slow, deliberate line straight across Carlos’ neck as Tillman stared down at his captive. He looked like an abandoned lighthouse. The lamp was shining, sure, but nobody was home. “I could just kill you now. Slit your thhhhhhroat, my d-dear boy.”

“Then do it! F-fu-UCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER DO IT.” No matter how scared he was, no matter how much pain made him stumble through the words, he’d still say them. He was determined to say them till he fucking died.

Tillman leaned in close. One of his hands was still buried in Carlos’ abdominal cavity, and this time it wriggled a gentle path upwards. He felt knuckles brush against his ribs. The tissue that cradled his lungs and heart. He felt the soft wetness of Tillman’s tongue as it licked over the blood line on his neck. “I might as well kill you. You can n-never be fixed. No matter what I…what I do…” His awful minty breath tickled against Carlos’ cheek. Tears cooled against his skin as he shook in his restraints and tried desperately not to feel the scientist counting his ribs from the inside. He wondered how long he could even last, opened up like this, and why he hadn’t already died.

Maybe he was already dead.

Maybe he was in hell.

___

He’d passed out again without realizing it, the only evidence being that one moment Tillman was squeezing his internal organs like they were his personal stress balls, the next he was standing over Carlos with a bloody mass in his hand.

“Is that… Is that my…?” He was so cold. He was shaking all over but still so damned cold.

“Kidney? Why, yes. It’s quite bad. See?” The scientist held Carlos’ own kidney up under his nose for his inspection, but he could see nothing wrong with it. He knew with a kind of sickening certainty that there had been nothing wrong with it.

“I’m afraid that’s all we can do. There’s so much e-else that I could… Fix. In here.” The scientist paused to turn his vacant gaze back down to Carlos’ ruined insides. A long coil of his intestines lay limply against his hip. He could see a shock of white bone somewhere.

“I’m going to have to ask you to please stay silent now while I stitch things back up. You squeal very nicely but I need to concentrate now, dear boy.”

A thick wad of gauze bandages was stuffed deep into Carlos’ mouth, and he made some kind of sound around them. Defiance? Pleading? He wasn’t sure anymore. Tillman reached a hand in again and this time found something hard. Something boney. It was his spi–

___

Moving through the hallway. Ceiling passing by like dull clouds of stucco. The pain had followed him even here. It would never stop stalking behind him. How much blood had he lost? Where was Ben? How much blood can someone even–

___

A kitchen. A warm kitchen and a fleeting feeling of being safe. Ben was there. Ben couldn’t stay. It was better that way though. The pain would eat Ben if he stayed. The world shook and the pain gobbled Carlos whole.

___

“…subject responding well to the replacement?….”

“…at least another week in recov…”

“…can’t be sure the body won’t reject…”

“…of course we included the tracking devi…”

“….the normal payment of course, Dr. Till…”

___

When he looked down again his insides were back on the inside. He touched a couple shaking fingers to the healing X scar that marred his entire torso. Ugly staples made ugly railroads across his body. The pain had stayed, but it was drowned enough to stop screaming. Why bother giving him pain meds now?? Carlos tried to focus on the surroundings of the room. Was this a hospital? Was…was he actually OUT??

Tillman stepped into his field of vision like a satellite passing over the sun and blotting out it’s light. His eyes were back to Detached Doctor mode.

“Good afternoon. And how are we feeling?”

There was a smudge of red at the corner of Tillman’s placid mouth.

Carlos opened his own and screamed.

#not whumptober #challenge accepted #vivisection #gore #blood #intimate whumper #noncon touching #creepy whumper #passing out #torture #stay safe with this one kiddos

45 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTORS

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold by three separate types of people. Tcl is the scripting language of Unix, and so its size is proportionate to its complexity, and a funnel for peers. By this point everyone knows you should release fast and iterate. Programming languages are for. They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. But I think there's more going on than this. If you run out of money, you could say either was the cause. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time writing code and have someone else handle the messy business of extracting money from it. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.1 Every designer's ears perk up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one?

I decided to ask the founders of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, will destroy you if you choose them. It's due to the shape of the problem here is social. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of customer acquisition. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this startup seems the most successful companies. A good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. The second way to compete with focus is to see what you're making.

But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that source code will look unthreatening. In DC the message seems to be the new way of delivering applications. White. I'm going to risk making one. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that from the rush of work that's always involved in releasing anything, no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more you stay pointed in the same business. PR coup was a two-part one. It's conversational resourcefulness. We're more confident. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world.2 Treating indentation as significant would eliminate this common source of bugs as well as making programs shorter. Once you take several million dollars of my money, the investors get a great deal of control.

The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. It works.3 It could mean an operating system, or a framework built on top of a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was the scripting language of a popular system.4 Blogger got down to one person, and they have a board majority, they're literally your bosses.5 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to fix upon a specific number.6 But as long as you seem to be advancing rapidly, most investors will leave you alone.7 What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for others even to hear about it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.8 If it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time, but didn't.9

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it was: I think the main reason we take the trouble to develop high-level languages is to get leverage, so that we can say and more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of declarations. Trying to make masterpieces in this medium must have seemed to Durer's contemporaries that way that, say, making masterpieces in comics might seem to the average person today. I kept searching for the Cambridge of New York, I was very excited at first. Which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late 1950s. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem with Lisp, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some of the least excited about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be prepared to see the better idea when it arrives. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. The Detroit News.10

Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day job, is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who do make it. But the clearest message is that you should be smarter. But hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly.11 You won't get to, unless you fail. Running a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, and a funnel for peers. It's since grown to around 22,000.12 You may save him from referring to variables in another package, but you need time to get any message through to people that it didn't have to be more readable than a line of Lisp. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it. I'm just stupid, or have worked on some limited subset of applications. This is supposed to be a lot simpler. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand.13

With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big factor in deals. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common problem: choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of unloading them before they tank. A programming language does need a good implementation, of course. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life. With a startup, I had bought the hype of the startup world, startup founders get no respect. A real hacker's language will always have a slightly raffish character.14 The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. But there is a trick you could use the two ideas interchangeably. Their reporters do go out and get users, though. A throwaway program is brevity. I do that the main purpose of a language is readability, not succinctness.15 You can't build things users like without understanding them.

At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own and b something that can be considered a complete application and ship it. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something; by then, whoever's asking him may be fairly annoyed, but at the same time the veteran's skepticism. There are several local maxima.16 Defense contractors? When, if ever, is a watered-down Lisp with infix syntax and no macros. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

Notes

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of a long time in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. Even Samuel Johnson seems to be a good idea to make money.

A related problem that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your own mind. That should probably question anything you believed as a cause as it might take an angel investment from a company's culture.

If you don't think they'll be able to formalize a small company that could be made. There was no more unlikely than it was putting local grocery stores out of business you should be.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a time machine, how can anything regressive be good employees either.

If big companies to acquire the startups, the light bulb, the initial investors' point of a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, but I think what they campaign for. When governments decide how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if we think your idea is that parties shouldn't be that the Internet was as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have this second self keep a journal. While the audience already has to be more at home at the start, e.

Some will say that it also worked for spam. The closest we got to the Internet worm of its identity. Icio.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that a startup in the US, it would do it is genuine. Com in order to attract workers.

But the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, except in the back of your last round of funding rounds are at some of these limits could be ignored. Comments at the mafia end of the latter without also slowing the former, and also really good at generating your own time in the computer world, write a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the attempt to discover the most promising opportunities, it is very vulnerable to gaming, because there's no center to walk to.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the first year or two make the kind that has become part of a large chunk of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in one where life was tougher, the television, the more subtle ways in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. For these companies unless your last funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

Mozilla is open-source browser. They may not be led by a big factor in high school kids arrive at college with a truly feudal economy, at least should make what they claim was the recipe: someone guessed that there are before the name implies, you don't, but that we didn't do. They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but they hate hypertension. Living on instant ramen, which are a hundred years ago.

I don't think you should probably question anything you believed as a rule, if you're measuring usage you need, you don't have one. Don't be fooled. So managers are constrained too; instead of admitting frankly that it's a seller's market. This is one subtle danger you have a group of people who are both genuinely formidable, and would probably also encourage companies to say how justified this worry is.

One of the biggest winners, which is where product companies go to grad school, because you can work out. It's conceivable that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

So where do we draw the line?

In 1995, but he got there by another path. If you treat your classes as a company if the potential magnitude of the 2003 season was 2. An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Confucius claimed proudly that he had more fun in this essay, I can imagine what it would have started there.

I'm satisfied if I could pick them, and they succeeded. Consulting is where your existing investors help you even working on Viaweb. If they were taken back in July 1997 was 1. But the change is a scarce resource.

1 note · View note

thecloserkin · 5 years

Text

book review: Marian Veevers, Jane & Dorothy (2018)

Genre: Biography

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: No

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: Y’all fools: Stanning Lord Byron and his half-sister Augusta whom he didn’t even meet until he was nearly grown, never mind whether he actually knocked her up. Me, an intellectual: William and Dorothy Wordsworth are right there, eloping to the countryside and spending the rest of their days holed up in a picturesque cottage composing poetry.

First let’s have a detour where I yell about Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro). A few of the recent asks about incest vs. the patriarchy got me thinking about this line from Jane & Dorothy: “the malevolent power of married women over their spinsters-in-law.” Between the wife and the unmarried sister it’s obvious who has more power and it’s clearly not the spinster sister-in-law—and yet Guillermo del Toro would have us believe that Edith in Crimson Peak is helpless before Lucille’s resistance to giving up the skeleton key (the one that opens every room in the house). Edith is made out to be the victim of Lucille’s bloodthirsty unhinged jealousy, when she’s not only THE WIFE she’s got ALL THE MONEY, she’s literally holding all the cards??? It doesn’t add up. This biography is the antidote to that. It looks at the paucity of options open to your average 19th century girl who just wants a Room of One’s Own to write in, and situates her bid for freedom in the context of having no good options. The trouble with “Crimson Peak” was not that Edith wasn’t relatable or that I didn’t identify with her; when Thomas tears her down in that faux-breakup speech he attacks her on the terrain where she’s most vulnerable, her abilities as a writer. The trouble with Crimson Peak was that this beat would have hit so much harder had it landed on Lucille, a woman who’s WAY more vulnerable than Edith by dint of having (1) no marriage prospects and (2) no inheritance. Without Thomas this bitch has (3) no survival strategy either! Otoh take away Thomas and Edith is still left with her dad’s $$$, Edith still has Alan waiting in the wings to swoop in & save her, in other words Edith will be just fine. No wonder Lucille feels so threatened!! The situations are not even comparable. Here then is Jane & Dorothy which offers two case studies of women whose impulse to write & create was just as strong as Edith’s, but whose plight was much closer to Lucille’s ie. precarious as fuck.

I picked this book up because it’s actually a dual biography of Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, and I’m a basic bitch and Jane Austen is my eternal favorite. I’m going to focus on the Dorothy chapters but rest assured I read the Jane chapters with equal gusto. Jane Austen (b. 1775) and Dorothy Wordsworth (b. 1771) were both born into the British pseudo-gentry, which means they were too highborn to go and get a paying gig as a governess or companion but not highborn enough to have any independent source of income (neither of them had a dowry settled on them). While the two women never crossed paths, the arcs of their lives run in parallel as they pursue divergent strategies to secure their futures. So the primary imperative here is to avoid a life of domestic drudgery. But the secondary imperative, because these are both perceptive girls with rich inner lives, is this:

For an intelligent woman, confined to a society which denies her higher education and restricts her existence largely to the home, the male companion with whom she shares her life is her chief provider, not only of security and affection, but of intellectual stimulation.

This is a popular romance novel plot, do I want to marry a man who is a bore (possibly also a boor) or do I want to starve hmmmm. The point is that women are frequently starved for both affection and intellectual stimulation, and it’s little wonder Dorothy fell so hard for her brother William when he showered her with both. Dorothy and William were separated as children when, after the death of their mother, she was sent to live with an aunt in West Yorkshire (she was seven, he was eight). Nine years later they reconnected and sparks flew almost immediately. I mean I think their letters speak for themselves:

”the last time we were Together William won my Affection to a Degree which I cannot describe.”

What kind of brother needs to “win” his sister’s affection? Most of them treat sisters like furniture.

”Never have my eyes burst upon a scene of particular loveliness,” he wrote, “but I have wished that you could be transported to the place where I stood to enjoy it.”

standard “everything beautiful either reminds me of you, or makes me want to share it with you” pablum but EXTREMELY effective for all that

but enough he is my brother, why should I describe him? I shall be launching again into panegyric

Dorothy: hahaha but don’t you think my brother was looking mighty fiiiiiine today

”his attentions to me were such as the most insensible of mortals must have been touched with”

”I assure you so eager is my desire to see you that all obstacles vanish. I see you in a moment running or rather flying to my arms.”

That letter is from William, and you have to remember that William was supposed to be a huge dick who routinely ignored his friends’ missives leaving them in suspense whether he was alive or dead and yet he managed a lively & regular correspondence with Dorothy for years before they moved in together. It’s almost like he treated her … special.

”that sympathy which will almost identify us when we have stole to our little cottage”

These kids are already plotting their elopement jfc! Here are some snippets from Dorothy’s diary from much later, after they have in fact achieved The Dream of their own cottage:

”After dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him and my Beloved slept.”

”The fire flutters and the watch ticks and I hear nothing save the Breathing of my Beloved and he now and then pushes his book forward and turns over a leaf.” It is a picture of domestic contentment such as Jane Austen draws to portray a genuinely happy marriage.

”After we came in we sat in deep silence at the window — I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and love, a blessed hour.”

This is literally #goals. Veevers points out that “the conflation of marriage with home, spinsterhood with insecurity” meant that “William was promising the kind of permanence and safety which women usually found in marriage.” Dorothy really thought she could Have It All: a home of her own and a rich, stimulating intellectual life shared with the man she loved. And she proceeded to spend the rest of her life making fair copies of his poems. Hell, she pushed him to be a poet in the first place (it was not at all clear initially that this was the best plan for William, who could just have easily have embarked on a career as a political polemicist, but it was Dorothy who pushed him to be a poet, Dorothy who spent the rest of her life copying out his verses in her fairer hand). Early on Dorothy & William befriended the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was so envious of their bond that he complained, “You have all in each other, but I am lonely, and want you!” Can you b e l i e v e Coleridge actually said that. If one of you hoes doesn’t write me the William/Dorothy Historical RPF that’s Coleridge Outsider POV I s2g I will do my damnedest to die of consumption.

Veveers sums it up this way: “It was a relationship few women would be able to have with their husbands, for, at the time, the two sexes were expected to inhabit different mental landscapes.” To put it bluntly women had ovaries instead of brains; they just weren’t interested in the same stuff a man was. Otoh you have William and Dorothy Wordsworth, actual soulmates: the historical consensus is there is “some uncertainty as to whether she would be best described as muse, emotional support, secretary or co-author.” And she didn’t hide it, either. This is where you really see the difference between Dorothy, who is so open, and Austen heroines like Eleanor Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility), Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) or Anne Eliot (Persuasion) who also feel things deeply but had to regulate the bejeezus out of their emotional responses. This is Dorothy:

After any separation her joy at meeting her brother again was uncontrollable. “I believe I screamed,” she admitted on one occasion when there were witnesses.

Uncontrollable screaming in front of witnesses every time she’s reunited with her brother??? WE STAN. This is how low Dorothy’s spirits sink whenever he’s gone:

”I slept in Wm.’s bed, and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.”

adkfjdkfjdkfjdk I just want to add that when William is home the floorboards are so thin that she can hear him pacing in the bedroom above hers, so his insomnia keeps both of them up at night but she doesn’t mind, she can’t sleep until he falls asleep, she would probably give up a kidney or a lung if she thought it would sell 500 more copies for him. I’m torn between GIRL HE AIN’T WORTH IT and stanning her even harder for being so ride or die on any topic that touches her brother (later, when he has kids, she decides William’s kids are smarter and better-looking than everyone else’s kids).

This is the most iconic line in the entire book, from a letter Dorothy writes to an interfering relative who deplores Dorothy’s judgment for throwing in her lot with a penniless failson like William:

”I affirm that I consider the character and virtues of my brother sufficient protection”

The icily scathing tone of the setdown is PERFECTION. But also, this just in your brother abandoned his pregnant Catholic mistress in France. You know this. Yet here you are gallivanting around the countryside in his company. In fact, when he proves too much of a coward to tell your uncle himself about the existence of said pregnant mistress—this is the uncle who funded all of William’s education and reasonably expects some return on it—he delegates Dorothy to break the news. Dorothy also winds up in charge of all correspondence with the poor girl, who writes occasionally asking for a little money or when is William coming back to France to marry me, and it’s Dorothy who has to fob her off. And this whole incident—the revelation of the French mistress, the break with the family, William refusing to take holy orders to become a clergyman—is so pivotal in their relationship! They were close before but this is the irrevocable step when Dorothy decides to join her fate to his. And her motivation could not be clearer:

William’s outspoken affection for her seems to have first aroused a reciprocal love in Dorothy, but it was his fall from grace, his isolation and his need of a friend, which provided the final catalyst that raised her gradually deepening affection into wholehearted, single-minded devotion.

She saw his need and responded almost involuntarily. She is a RESCUER.

Dorothy, was in one way, very fortunate to have fallen in love with her brother. “Rambling around the country on foot” with a slightly disreputable brother might bring down the censure of her more conventional relatives, but it was a good deal safer than rambling about with a man who was not a brother.

This is the kind of behavior that if two unrelated people engaged in it must have resulted in the man being honor-bound to extend an offer of marriage, because a woman has nothing if she doesn’t have her virtue. Two siblings roaming the countryside, picking flowers and wading thru streams and stargazing? My god what PRIME fodder for fake married tropes! Just present yourself at the first inn you come to as a married couple and then guess what? There was only one bed!!!!

at Grasmere “there was an unnatural tale current of Wordsworth … having been intimate with his own sister.”

tell me MOAR omg this is so deliciously Gothic i keep thinking about that line from Wuthering Heights “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

at Alfoxton, “the master of the house,” it was said, “had no wife with him, but only a woman who passes for his sister.”

PASSES for his sister trololololol like they don’t act the way you’d expect of a brother and sister, like they’re too into each other.

And it was generally accepted that immorality and radical anti-British sentiment went together.

But really William got much more staid and less radical as he got older, and Dorothy was never political because her energies were centered on William William William. On top of which it’s hard to overlook the fact that William would go into Dorothy’s journals and “borrow” her words and publish them verbatim as his own; he felt as entitled to her intellectual labor as her domestic labor, and there is nothing radically egalitarian about that. So I definitely don’t think this is a case where incest is subversive so much as incest illuminating existing hierarchies & oppressions. Veveers writes: “An unmarried woman’s hold on her own time was extremely fragile. She could be made use of in any crisis, transported against her wishes” to fulfill another family members’ needs. Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra evidently shouldered both their weights when it came to this sort of emotional labor: writing letters of thanks & condolence, minding their brothers’ children, calming hypochondriac aunts down, attending births of little nephews & nieces. Cassandra doing all this extra labor gave Jane the space and time to write. Moreover Jane had formed the ambition to write. Dorothy, on the other hand, thought anything worth saying was already being said by William. And she didn’t have her own Cassandra to share the unceasing burden of housework with:

In fact, the domestic labor and childcare that lay ahead of Dorothy were almost indistinguishable from the duties she had escaped at Forncett rectory. But now she was to be living in a home she had chosen, with a man she loved.

Did it matter in the end, Dorothy’s rebellion? If she’d remained a hanger-on in her uncle’s household, living on his charity, her life would not have been outwardly all that different. I have to believe that her choices did matter, of course. It would be easy to sit here and speculate that if Dorothy had not poured all her mental and physical resources into supporting William’s career, she too might have produced another Pride & Prejudice, but naturally we cannot know that. What we know is that Dorothy and William were 100% in love, a fact that anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension can verify by reading their letters. Why is this not more widely discussed? William Wordsworth was not exactly an obscure poet. The explanation, again, comes back to patriarchy:

The idea that Dorothy might have inspired (or felt) desire at Dove Cottage was as abhorrent to mid-20th century academics as it was to gentlemen of the early 19th century … who preferred to think of unmarried women drooping and degenerating after the age of 25, rather than maintaining a subversive and disturbing sexuality.

I wish I could say that William and Dorothy grew old together at Dove Cottage. What actually happened is he got married (she talked him into it—she chose a mutual friend of theirs whom they’d known for ages) and accidentally fell in love with his wife oops. His new wife was neither young nor pretty, in fact she was painfully plain, but that William became genuinely attached to her there can be no doubt. Dorothy continued to live with them and look after their children until her death. So I think we have avoided the worst case scenario, the malevolent-power-of-the-married-woman-ruins-her-spinster-in-law’s-life scenario: This is what happened to Jane Austen when Jane’s father unexpectedly announced his retirement, uprooting Jane and Cassandra from the Steventon rectory where they’d lived all their lives and forcibly removing them to Bath, where Jane was so miserable she did no writing for years. All this upheaval on account of Jane’s brother and his wife wanting the Steventon rectory and its income for their own! The accursed woman was probably measuring the drapes before she’d moved in. Anyway, it is fortunate this open enmity did not characterize Dorothy Wordsworth’s relationship with her sister in law; they were fast friends and they remained friends after the latter’s marriage to William. But instead of William-and-Dorothy forming the nucleus of life at Dove Cottage now it was William-and-Mary, and if this did not sting at least a little Dorothy would not be human. She had been supplanted in William’s heart. I CRY.

Because I’m literal shipper trash I want to end on the bittersweet note of SIBLINGS EXCHANGING RINGS AS A SYMBOL OF COMMITMENT EVEN THO THEY CAN’T LEGALLY GET MARRIED. This is Dorothy’s description of the morning of William and Mary’s wedding, right before they leave the house to attend the ceremony:

”I gave him the wedding ring—with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before—he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently.” It might be said that William married her before he married Mary, and that Dorothy was making a promise in that upstairs room try like the one Mary was about to make in church.

it’s been two months since I read this book and i’m STILL SCREECHING byeeeee

#dorothy wordsworth #book review

11 notes · View notes

welllpthisishappening · 5 years

Text

A Request for Help, Version 2.0

Hello, hey, hi there. So, yesterday, I wrote, posted and then very quickly got rid of a thing about a story I am writing because it is my greatest fear that I will annoy the internet.

Like imagine me writing and somehow being both Ms. Piggy and Kermit:

The problem here is that I still kind of need some help if said internet is inclined to do it. Basically I have been writing this time travel story for over a year. I have aesthetic boards, Spotify playlists, character breakdowns and color coded timelines. But! When I decided I wanted to go back and edit my first draft, I was like...this is a lot. There are a lot of moving parts and visions of the future and the color coding is really necessary.

The edit has more or less become a full-scale rewrite. There are still a lot of moving parts, but the chapters aren’t 8K anymore, some things have been changed or taken out or plot points have been moved up. I think it’s going ok, and yet. My concern is that this story only makes sense in my head.

The gist of it is our heroine, Scarlett, just turned twenty-five and discovered that the job she’s going to interview at isn’t so much a job offer as it is the bad guy (Carter Campbell) trying to use her to take over the world. Obviously. Because Scarlett Nolan isn’t just a normal twenty-five year old, she can control all five of the ancient elements and, by extension, time itself. Our love interest, Alex, tells her that after he shows up on the Subway. Alex has spent the last two years getting randomly tugged through Scarlett’s timeline, trying to find her at this one, perfect spot so she doesn’t go to the interview with Campbell.

There’s lots more, but that’s the general idea, plus kissing because of who I am as a person. Now, what am I asking? You don’t have to read all 15 chapters I’ve written, but if you’re interested and want to read some early ones and let me know what confuses you or doesn’t or you think should be explained more, that’d really set my mind at ease. Like I said, I’ve been working on this story for ages, so it means a lot and I’m really trying to make it the best it can be.

Words under the cut so, if you do want to read, you can see some more about Scarlett and Alex. Feel free to message me if you want to read or tell me to shut up about my own writing or want to know what songs I think go with what characters.

“Uh, excuse me?”

Scarlett jumped, slamming her head into the door and no one else looked. “Ah, shit,” she hissed.”God damn, that hurt. I think I’m concussed.” The guy paled at the tone of her voice, crouching in front of her and Scarlett got the distinct impression he was trying not to reach out towards her. A curl fell far too close to his right eyebrow to be fair. “Fuck,” he breathed. “I--uh, oh fuck.” “Articulate, aren’t you?” “Sometimes. Not now, obviously, but I really don’t think you're concussed.” Scarlett’s jaw dropped, reaching up to press the heel of her hand into the back of her head and she was surprised to find that there wasn’t a baseball-sized lump there. “If that was your attempt at apologizing for scaring the shit out of me, it fell pretty flat.” He smiled. It was kind of like staring at—something big and important and absolutely life-changing. “I wasn’t trying to scare you,” he said, any sense of that previous tension evolving into what might have actually been misplaced flirting. “I...well, I had a question.” Scarlett made a face, she knew she did. She had a habit. A bad one. Owen teased her about it mercilessly and Ella told her she’d make a horrible informant because every thought that flitted through her mind, somehow, ended up on her face.

“That’s what you’re going with?” she asked, doing her best to infuse as much venom into the question as possible. His smile wavered. “I don’t understand.” “Are you fucking with me? I mean, I’ll give you points for not giving a damn. But that’s what you're opening with? After the elbow thing—” “—That wasn’t intentional.” “And the staring thing,” Scarlett continued, barely breaking conversational stride, “Were you going to ask for directions and then casually drop in that you’re new in town and looking for some company later?” He blinked. The smile was gone. “I’m not new in town.” Scarlett couldn’t imagine a situation where she’d ever though the word husky, but it seemed strangely appropriate in the moment, his voice dropping low with an obvious sense of determination and—

Frustration.

He was frustrated. And tired and overwhelmed and actually a little concerned about her head. Scarlett could feel it, the maelstrom of absolutely everything twisting around her joints and timing up with her pulse. “That isn’t what’s happening right now. It’s bigger than that.” “Excuse me?” “You were right about the directions, as, like, a starter, but I didn’t want this to be weird—” “—Oh, you didn’t want it to be weird?” He huffed, eyes widening and it was more familiarity that didn’t make any sense at all. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. “So you’re just a completely presumptuous asshole, then?” Scarlett fumed. “Sometimes. Not now. This is—it’s important, I promise. I’ve been trying to…” “To what?” His exhale was barely that, a burst of air through clenched teeth and that one piece of hair hadn’t moved. It was like it was taunting Scarlett with vaguely attractive and a bit of memory and she could feel his nerves. No, that wasn’t right. She couldn’t feel people’s emotions. Least of all some creep on the uptown-6. “Ok,” he said, pressing his tongue into the side of his mouth. “I’m going to tell you something and I need you not to punch me in the face or kick me in a variety of places.” “No.” “What?” “No, stranger on the train who spent an entire commute elbowing me in the kidney, I will not promise you that.” “Your kidneys are in your back.” “Get to your point, strange train person. Is this a kidnapping attempt? Because it sucks. And I don’t want to buy your candy or support your music career.” He laughed, the sound barely making it to Scarlett’s ears before he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not any of those things. And it’s Alex, by the way. Strange train person seems excessively wordy.” “I do not care. And I’m not telling you my name either. Was there a point to this conversation and anatomy lesson?” She was absolutely, one-hundred percent, no doubt about it, going crazy. His eyes were blue again. And Alex felt like a memory Scarlett couldn’t quite place.

“There is, that’s what I’m getting at. I just—ok, please don’t punch and just...stop feeling things.” Scarlett breath hitched. “You need to talk. Now. Because I am getting off at the next stop.” “I know.” “Talk, strange train person!” “Alex,” he groaned. “We just did this. Alex Byrne.” “Words. Say them.” His laugh was shaky at best and terrifying at worst, hand finding the back of his hair again when he looked at her. Or, possibly through her. Like he knew her. Well.

The train stopped, a station Scarlett needed to get out at in order to ensure some kind of future that also ensured she stayed in an apartment she was maybe only vaguely welcome in. Alex’s eyes bugged.

Scarlett nodded once, popping her lips in annoyance and what may have been have actually been disappointment. She took a step to her left, fingers moving with practiced ease and he didn’t glance down when she pocketed his phone. “Alright,” she said. “Well, this has been as weird as my entire day so far, so, uh, it was not nice to meet you Alex Byrne, strange person on the train. Don’t be an asshole to other people.”

She didn’t wait for a response, the weight of his phone impossible to ignore in her pocket, and she almost felt guilty when she took a step onto the platform.

Until she heard him shouting at her. He was shouting her name.

He knew her name. Scarlett sprinted up the stairs, the cold air stinging her lungs when she tried to gulp it down as soon as she reached the sidewalk. And for as many emotions as she’d felt in the last twenty minutes, the one coursing through her was brand-new — a mix of fear and excitement and complete power.

She tugged the phone out of her pocket, no passcode and only a few apps on the home screen. “Idiot,” Scarlett mumbled, slamming her thumb onto a social media app with three notifications.

He hadn’t been lying about the name. It was right there, in black and white and photo evidence — a picture that didn’t look too old staring up at Scarlett and that one piece of hair falling across his forehead was apparently a trend.

Alexander Byrne. Twenty-seven. Rhode Island native. No job listed. Less than one hundred friends. One sister. And a chat bubble in the corner of the screen.

Scarlett clicked.

She knew it was wrong, could hear the warning signs like that also didn’t prove how insane she was quickly becoming, but she was curious and something was wrong. About the whole day. And possibly her.

She nearly dropped the phone.

The messages were from a woman with thick-rimmed glasses and brown hair and they should not have existed.

They were timestamped April...next year.

“What the fuck,” Scarlett muttered, staring at the screen and waiting for it to change. It didn’t. Instead, she might have, the undeniable smell of smoke wafting up towards her and the phone screen shattered as soon as it fell out of her fingers.

The same ones that had, quite suddenly, burst into flames. Scarlett couldn’t catch her breath again, dangerously close to hyperventilating on Madison Avenue when she heard footsteps and a quiet voice coming towards her. She screwed her eyes closed. He didn’t stop walking.

It was raining. “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Alex whispered. “But you’re ok. I just—I can explain all of that. Please.” Scarlett shook her head slowly, not sure what she was objecting to, but her hand didn’t feel like it was burning and this had to be a dream. It wasn’t real. It hadn’t been before.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, “this isn’t going the way I thought it would at all.” Scarlett’s eyes snapped open to find him staring at her cautiously, flames flickering in between her fingers and he kept rocking into her space. Still not on purpose. “What?” “It’s not a trick, Scarlett. It’s—it’s the fate of the entire world.” She blinked once, trying to find the lie and coming up decidedly short. “Talk,” Scarlett said, and his fingers were warm when they wrapped around hers. The flames disappeared.

#laura rambles #writing #writing help #i don't know how to tag this again #maybe i won't lose my nerve and will keep this up for like more than five minutes #honestly sorry for constantly shouting about words internet

6 notes · View notes

garuda-dreams-of-rain · 6 years

Text

The Final, Final Problem

In honor of ILYanniversary2018, I wrote a little story. Please enjoy. 🙏🏻

Also on AO3.

*****

Sherlock kept banging on Molly’s door. “Let me in!” he yelled.

“Go away, Sherlock,” Molly shouted. “I’m not in the mood for your bullshit!”

“Please, Molly,” he begged. “You’ve got to let me explain.”

“Go away!”

Sherlock sank down in the hallway and sat, his back against her door. “I’m not leaving!” he bellowed. “Not until you let me in!”

“That’s never going to happen!” she hollered through the door. “You can’t play with my feelings like this! You’re such a bastard!”

Molly’s neighbor Patrick, a rather burly ginger pushing sixty, in his boxer shorts, vest and robe, whipped his door open and glared at Sherlock. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, would ye two please shut up now? It’s three o’clock in the bloody morning and this has been going on for 45 minutes!”

“I can’t leave,” Sherlock said, desperately. “I love her. I told her and she doesn’t believe me. I’m going to sit here until she opens the door or I die.” He crossed his arms and scowled. “I could be bleeding to death out here and fat lot she’d care!” he shouted at the unresponsive door.

“Jaysus,” said Patrick, rubbing his face. He went back inside his flat, pulled two beers out of his fridge, and joined Sherlock on the floor in the hallway, his back against his own door. He passed a beer to Sherlock. “Now, lad, tell me what’s happening.”

Sherlock cracked the beer and opened his mouth to speak, but Patrick held up a warning finger. “Just so ye know, laddie, I have a daughter nearly Molly’s age. She lives in Dublin and I love her more than me life. I look on Molly as me own. If I even think for a second that you’re jerking her around, I’ll be having your kidneys for breakfast. Understand?”

Sherlock swallowed and nodded. “It’s kind of…complicated,” he began.

“Always is, mate,” Patrick responded, evenly.

“Well, I have a sister who’s utterly insane, and locked up in a…um…institution.”

“Runs in the family, does it?” Patrick asked.

Sherlock shot him a look. “Anyway, today she made me call Molly and make her say…those words, but Molly made me say them first, and I knew it was terrible and awful and unforgivable and she was going to hate me but I couldn’t let her get blown up, could I?”

“Bollocks!” Patrick said.

“No, really,” Sherlock continued. “Listen, I know it’s supposed to be lovely and romantic when you tell a girl you love her. I’ve seen the movies, I’m not a complete idiot. There’s supposed to be flowers and rainbows and jewelry and sickening music with swelling strings or at least Frank Sinatra, and France in the background or something. I know that. But when you only have three minutes before the bombs go off, there’s no time to make it nice.”

“Bombs? Real bombs?” Patrick looked around, worried. “There’s bombs here?”

“Well, no. They weren’t real but I didn’t know that at the time. She’s really insane. My sister, I mean, not…Molly. Although she’s acting pretty crazy right now!” he shouted through the door. “Considering that I love her!”

“Fuck off, Sherlock!” Molly hollered back. “I’m going to bed!”

“We’re going to need something stronger than beer, mate,” Patrick sighed, going into his flat and coming out with a bottle and two glasses.

“Is that Irish whiskey?” Sherlock asked, a bit of trepidation in his voice.

“Something wrong with Irish whiskey?” Patrick demanded, narrowing his eyes and pouring them each a measure.

“No!” Sherlock was quick to add. “Fine whiskey. Lovely…people.”

They clinked glasses and downed the shots. Patrick poured some more. “Now, laddie. You’ve known her how long?”

“Seven years.”

“And when, to the nearest of your recollection, did ye start to love her?”

“Seven years ago. Don’t tell her I said that, okay?” Sherlock whispered conspiratorially.

“God almighty, ye are a moron, aren’t ye? And you’ve never told her.”

“Never. My work is rather dangerous, and, um, romantic entanglements could prove…fatal.”

“Well,” Patrick observed, “Now ye have a choice. Death from work, death from Molly, or death from me. Choose.” At Sherlock’s panicked expression, he burst out laughing. “I’m just having ye on, lad. But now, you’re going to have to clarify why romantic entanglements could be fatal.”

“Well, I have to keep my mind sharp and focused. If I’m thinking about Molly’s beautiful brown eyes at the wrong time, or that adorable little giggle, or the way she bites her bottom lip, or her cute upturned nose, or her…frankly terrible taste in clothes, or the way she makes jokes about death, or her kind heart which I don’t deserve, or the way she slaps me so..good…”

“Careful there, lad,” Patrick warned. “I don’t need to be hearing about your sex life.”

“We don’t have a sex life!” Sherlock shouted. “Because she won’t believe me when I tell her I love her! And god, now you’ve made me think about that and now I really am going to die.”

“So, ye don’t want to love her because you’re afraid of getting distracted at work?” Patrick shook his head. “Lad, I’m an iron worker. I spend me life running around on girders two, three hundred meters in the air. One wrong step and I’ll be a splat on the pavement. And as much as I adore me wife, which is to say with a powerful yearning that astonishes me every single day, I stay focused so I can go back to her sweet arms every single night. If I can do it, ye can do it. Every man knows that. ‘Cor blimey, mate, what kind of an idiot are ye?”

“I’m a lovesick idiot.” Sherlock muttered.

“That much is obvious,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “You’re going to have to woo her, lad.”

“What? You mean, stand here, sing songs, that kind of nonsense? Do you have a lute I can borrow?” Sherlock snort-laughed and took another shot. “If she would just let me in I know I could explain it to her.”

“Tell me instead.”

“Oh god,” Sherlock groaned. “She asked me out when we first met, but I shied off because she was so cute and adorable and I was immediately attracted to her, but I knew it was going to be a problem. So I put her off. But then I got to know her more, and I found out she was different from other girls…women. She was so strong and kept her dignity even when I insulted her that Christmas and I felt bad so I apologized. I never feel bad! I never apologize! I love her so much I even like it when she makes me feel terrible!”

Sherlock leaned over and yelled through the door. “I’m sorry, Molly! Please forgive me!” He turned back to Patrick. “Christ, look at me, I’m apologizing!”

“Aye, laddie, the terrible depths to which you’ve sunk,” Patrick chuckled.

Sherlock shook his head woefully and continued. “And then sometimes I’d want to see her so badly I could barely breathe, and sometimes I avoided her because it hurt to see her and not be with her, but she saw me and helped me and I trusted her with my life, and she kept my secret for two years! Two years! She saved my life. I owe her…everything. Everything. And when I came back I almost went for it because I was so lonely and she’s so lovely and I knew I was being a fool but I couldn’t help it because…”

“…you’re an idiot,” Patrick said.

“…because I’m an idiot and I didn’t see how wonderful and perfect she is, and she was engaged to that…sex maniac, and I wanted to punch him but then I thought why shouldn’t she have someone who’s good for her and not me? Someone…normal, someone who will cherish her and keep her safe and not me, running around chasing murderers and getting people into trouble. And then I couldn’t stop getting high, which is bad, I know it’s bad, but sometimes I can’t help it and then things have just been so…difficult and Mary died and I wanted to run to her...Molly, I mean, and just hold her but I couldn’t, because…”

“…you’re an arsehole,” Patrick said.

“…because I’m an arsehole and I was scared to do it because I’m not worthy of her, not at all and the next thing I knew there’s my sister whom I didn’t know I had, and I had to make her say it...Molly, I mean, or she would die and then I would die because I can’t live without her,” he finished, sorrowfully. “And now I’m going to sit here until she forgives me or I expire of unrequited love.”

Patrick stared at the younger man sitting opposite. He shook his head. “Laddie, you’re a mess, there’s no doubt about it. And a bit of a drama queen, too, I reckon. But I think you’ll have no problems.”

“Why?” Sherlock asked. “She won’t even talk to me.”

“No, but she heard you.”

“How do you know?” Sherlock wailed. “She went to bed, and I’m out here dying and she doesn’t even care!”

“Because I can see her shadow under the door,” Patrick answered. “She’s been sitting there listening to every word ye said. If the door wasn’t there, ye’d be sitting back to back.” He shook his head, got to his feet and knocked loudly on Molly’s door. “Open the door, ye daft lass! There’s a boyo out here who loves ye!”

The door flew open and Sherlock fell backwards through the frame. Molly squealed and jumped on him, straddling his hips and pressing kisses all over his face. “You do love me!” she exclaimed. “You love me!” Sherlock wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, wildly, happily.

“Of course I do, Molly,” Sherlock managed to say between kisses. “What did you think?”

“Now,” Patrick said, “ye two get up off the floor and get in there before I have to call the police and report ye for making a public nuisance of yourselves, disturbing the peace and whatnot. Jaysus, young folks today!”

They scrambled to their feet. Molly yanked Sherlock inside and slammed the door shut. Over the sound of their giggles from the other side of the door, Patrick yelled, “Don’t forget now, I get to give the bride away!”

“Patrick, ye foolish man,” said his wife, leaning in their doorway in her nightgown, her eyes shining. “Get back in here and leave them young lovers alone. It’s half three in the morning and I’m going to give ye a thorough snog, I am, because I love ye more than life itself.”

#ILYanniversary2018 #Sherlolly

137 notes · View notes

loquaciousquark · 6 years

Text

8th August. Genuinely cool today, glorious! Won’t last

I keep having to go to the keep for sundry Champion paperwork ephemera, and I noticed last week there’s a stain right at the bottom of the steps. It looks brown and stubborn despite the scrub-marks on the stone around it—in fact, it’s where Dumar’s head landed, and now that I’ve seen it I can’t stop seeing it. I asked Aveline, and she said she’s noticed it too. She tried to get at it herself with lye while I was out, but she said it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t even know stone could take up blood like that... although I suppose Kirkwall would be the place prone to that kind of thing.

There’s still no news of a new Viscount. Bran’s running the place as best he can (which, as it happens, would be a good deal better if he’d stop wasting so much time rolling his eyes at me every time he sees me), but Lady Ashbridge said on Pelarie’s visit last week that there’s rumors Meredith’s just going to run the city instead. Surely they won’t let that happen, though--how much power does one person need?

Then again...it’s Kirkwall.

I should talk to Varric.

In other news, took Sebastian to dinner the other day as thanks for accompanying me to the ball. Went to the Lime Pavilion, which has a twenty-sov minimum plate, but with Varric at the helm all my money does these days is make lots of tinier little baby monies, so I might as well get some use out of it. He had beef that came in a glass bowl with gold around the edges, and I had fish that was cut in the shape of a fish. Made it even worse that it was the most delicious thing I’ve had in months.

Spent the whole meal quietly panicking about which of my three forks to use. Serves me right for trying to cater to royalty’s nobler instincts. Sebastian covered for me well, but I’d just as soon sit with Isabela off the docks, swigging green liquor from a cracked bottle.

Haven’t heard from her even once since Cloudreach. I hope she’s alive.

16th August. Light showers all day, just enough to curl my hair into a right rat’s nest

I think I’m going to set Pelarie up with my next-door neighbor. Jule’s clever and kind and not quite as flat beneath her mother’s foot, and she’s got a great deal more in common with Pelarie than I do. Forgot to get a bit of drake ichor out from behind my ears the other day and Pelarie turned so green she might have grown gills. Her mother didn’t care for it either. Need to stop being jealous over people with mothers Besides, even if Jule’s not as flashy a catch she’s likely got a much better life expectancy.

Meant that to be funny, not bitter. Ah, well.

23rd August. Cooler again, a bit salty with some northerly winds off the Coast

Had a nice moment today I didn’t expect. I was sitting out back under the yew tree, trying to see if I felt any different with only one kidney, when I heard the back door open and out came Sandal with a bit of wood and a carving knife. He didn’t say anything, just sat next to me on the stone bench, and quietly began shaping it into something small, something with wings. It was...

It was rather lovely, actually.

Made up for this miserable All Soul’s Day at the beginning of August. Everyone dancing on their toes around Mother, as if I might turn to glass at the slightest memory of her. Can’t help but feel Isabela would have

Sandal hummed something I almost recognized while he was sitting with me. Then Bodahn came out and that moment was gone, but in favor of one just as pleasant, because he sat with us on the bench too (the benefit of a wide bench and two dwarvish sets of hips, I suppose), and with only the teensiest bit of coaxing he began telling us (me?) about some of his travels with the Hero of Ferelden.

Some days I wish I were her. Or--at least I wish I had her enemies. It must have been so nice knowing what you fought was evil through and through.

24th August. Still cool

Dreamed last night that I was trying to save Mother from the foundry, but she kept turning into darkspawn. Might know they’re evil, but that doesn’t help the horror at the twisted, slavering teeth. At least Meredith is people-shaped.

Ugh. Can’t get rid of these chills. I wonder if Varric has anything that needs doing.

2nd Kingsway. Saw the first orange leaf today and nearly cried from joy

Went to the Gallows this morning to talk to Solivitus. Had some harlot’s blush I thought he might like, which he did, but for the first time I found myself not entirely at ease with the way the templars’ eyes followed me the whole trip. I hadn’t been there since the Arishok, and Maker but was I glad Fenris and Aveline came with me. I don’t think they’d try anything without Meredith’s say-so, but this was the first time I felt that little tingling what-if in the back of my skull telling me I’d better watch my hide.

We’d be packing up tonight, if this were Lothering.

Anyway, while I was there I saw a girl that looked terribly familiar darting about between some of those market stands. Turns out she’s Pelarie’s little sister--not sixteen yet--who got caught making inkwells tip over from the back of the room while she was away at school. The Ashbridges called some favors and had her placed here, where they could visit.

More than I thought of Lady Ashbridge, even if I wouldn’t send my most hated feather boa into their care. (Meant the Gallows templars, but to be quite honest the Ashbridges too)

Pelarie says she’s been trying to send their grandmother’s necklace to her, but she’s afraid they’ll take it away. Jule (very kind about me crashing their tea) said she’d heard Gallows apprentices are allowed very few personal possessions, but she knew a family who used to send their son fritters and preserves and things all the time, so there might be some strings to pull if I can find them.

Well. What’s this damned title for, if not string-pulling?

8th Kingsway. Brisk and with the faintest smell of those crisp autumn apples from the cart down the street

Went to the Gallows again today. Saw Cullen, who sighs when I come into his office but at least doesn’t reach for a guardswhistle, and told him I wanted Pelarie’s sister to be given her family necklace. He argued with me for a good bit about keeping apprentices’ focus sharp on their studies and the risk of reminders of family ties compromising their emotional blah blah blah blah.

I said I’d work on that rumor about the blood mage cult springing up in Darktown if he’d let her keep it, and he said yes.

My skin has been crawling since I left that place, and that was almost three hours ago.

What if that were me? What if that were Bethany?

Later

For the first time in my life, I thought to myself “thank goodness she died first” after I wrote that line above and it’s rattled me so badly that I can’t

I hate

how could

Maker, I hate

15th Kingsway. One last damned heat wave. The Maker is mocking me. Or Andraste is instead, and I’ve just been rejected by every higher power who ever thought twice about sending this city even the faintest zephyr of relief

Asked Toby today if he wanted another dog in the house. He gave me the archest look I’ve ever seen on a mabari’s face and stalked in high dudgeon to the back garden, where he very deliberately pissed on the stone bench. Haven’t offended him that badly since I tied him all over in yellow ribbon and asked him to dance the Remigold with me.

I’d forgotten how drunk I was at that party

Anders and Merrill and I are going out to the southern side of Sundermount tomorrow. Anders needs elfroot and more spindleweed, and Merrill thinks there might be a supply of ironbark somewhere there she can use to create or work on or something for her arulin...oh, hells. How the Void do you spell that word?

I was considering asking Varric for a fourth just in case, as Aveline has another (and another and another and another) evening with Donnic planned. For as much as she went through getting to this city in the first place, I hate to take her away from the one shining light she’s found in it so far.

On the other hand, she does have our own glorious friendship as a second equally bright shining light. Maybe I can call that in as the cheap bargaining tactician I am.

Later.

Aveline said no.

Varric said no.

Sebastian said no.

Merrill said “arulin’holm.”

Fenris said yes, then no when he heard who was going, and then yes again when I said Anders they would probably be so interested in their own collecting that Anders they would hardly have time to needle.

Also, I begged.

16th Kingsway. I am cursed beyond the ken of mortal memory

We’re stranded on the damned mountain.

It was cloudy when we left and it only got darker, but everyone said to keep going, we could beat the rain before it got bad. Ha! Had to take a narrow path to get to this ironbark of Merrill’s, and while we were up the cliffs a freak storm came from nowhere and washed the whole path to a great lot of boulders and rotten logs. Stopped raining not twenty minutes later, but the damage was already done. Merrill’s been looking for another way down but it’s almost dusk and I think we’ll have to camp.

I keep expecting Fenris and Anders to be either furious or intolerably snippy, but every time I accidentally make eye contact (despite the enormous effort I’m exerting to avoid exactly that), they both seem perfectly cheerful. Well, as cheerful as they get. Anders even smiled at some comment Fenris made about how once when he slept outside, a handful of territorial crows chased him right out of a tree.

Almost said it could be worse. At least Merrill’s managed to get a fire going—everything’s soaked to the bone.

24th Kingsway. Still cold, damp, foggy, grey

Made it home from Sundermount, obviously, and all four of us have the most glorious head colds to show for it. Merrill and I ended up having to carve through a good deal of the detritus from the landslide with magic, which even Fenris didn’t blink at given the alternative was another night in open air. Cold, frosty open air, with occasional winds sharp enough to split a nosehair.

I was strongly inclined to see what Anders’s healing could do for this, but he says a head cold won’t kill any of us and it’s good to let the body fight on its own occasionally, which sounded so much like my father I left his clinic in perfect childlike resentment.

That was yesterday. Surely if I tell him I’m dying today he won’t mind if I touch myself up, just a little. My nose is both so stuffy I can’t breathe and running so badly I’ve taken to shoving napkins up it all morning.

How blightedly unfair. All this nonsense and I can’t even breathe to complain about it properly.

25th Kingsway. See previous, bloody unchanged, and no I’m not upset about it, why do you ask

Maker and all his holy works, but Fenris is pitiful. Never have I ever seen an elf laid so low by a little fever and a stopped nose. I went over this morning with some of Orana’s father’s soup just in case, but he was cocooned so deep in his blankets all I could see was the very tip of one dark, pointed ear. Then he told me to go away with the saddest little sneeze right in the middle of a word.

Made him finish the soup and drink an entire glass of water. He called me a Tevinter word that he claims means “sadist,” but he did at least un-cocoon long enough to say goodbye.

I keep wondering if he’s ever had anyone bother to care he was sick before—at least, that he remembers. Somehow I doubt it.

26th Kingsway, somewhere around midnight, I don’t know

Fenris’s fever worsened all day today, until by late afternoon I couldn’t rouse him properly. Anders came by around dinner and must have seen the panic in my face, because the first thing he told me after examining him was that he’d be fine. He left a vial of something thick—I recognized the elfroot and I think embrium, but to be honest I was watching Fenris struggle to turn over—and said he should have a teaspoon every hour until breakfast tomorrow. He said he’d be fine. We just have to wait for the fever to take its course.

Flames, he looks awful, even asleep. Grey in the face and he’s got a chesty cough that sounds wet. The first time it happened I had a violent flash to Carver in the Deep Roads and nearly upset the lunch tray. Anders and I both worked what healing we could, but there’s only so much to be done for something like this. Maker, my father’s death taught me that, and that was almost ten years ago.

Anders said he’d be fine. He didn’t even stay, which of itself is enough to tell me there’s nothing to worry about.

If Fenris feels half as bad as he looks, he must feel like death.

Later. Early?

Failed to occur to me that in the absence of pinned candles, the only way to make sure Fenris gets one of these doses every hour is to stay up myself.

Not much gets by my eagle’s eyes these days, but I suppose even the most avid hunter misses one once in a while.

3rd bell

Hawk’s eyes. Damn!

4th bell and a bit

Fenris woke up this time, just for a few minutes. He’s not really been present since afternoon, so it was...it was a relief to see lucidity. Tired, too, but one must make allowances here and there.

He was enough himself to complain about the sourness of the potion. I told him if he felt able to be picky about the taste he ought to be able to take another cup of soup and some water, and he called me the Tevinter sadist again.

He just went back to sleep, but he still looks terrible. His breathing is better, though.

Almost 5th bell, still dark as pitch

First time I’ve ever been truly glad I live so close to this blasted elf. Was able to run home and dig out some spare linens from one of Orana’s closets before I had to wake him again. He’s sweated his pillow through and his sheets are soaked. If he’s still improving on this next dose I’ll roll him off long enough to get the fresh sheets down.

Half past, still darker than light outside, though the horizon’s fading a bit grey

He just went back to sleep. Got the new sheets on—he didn’t understand why at first, which...I didn’t know what to say to that except that I knew he’d feel acres better on clean, dry bedclothes, and I intended to change them whether he was willing or not.

He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it was plain he was relieved to be out of that damp mess.

I was too, if I’m being honest.

Anyway, he wasn’t eager to go back to sleep after, despite the potion putting him just a touch loopy. We chatted about...oh, nothing of consequence, only Toby and apples and Varric’s latest pamphlet about the Championship ceremony and how the weight of that iron circlet has bent better heads than mine, and only time will tell how I carry its burden, etc, etc. Sometimes I wish Varric lent a little less effort to dramatic irony and a little more to my public credentiality. Credentials?

Talked a bit about Stinton and Pelarie and the rest, too. I told him I was doing well enough with their mothers, but that Lady Ashbridge might resent me pushing Pelarie into the arms of another woman right under her nose. Ah, but such is the uneven course of love.

He asked me about his sister twice near the end, which was how I knew the potion was kicking in at last. I had nothing I could tell him either way, and the second time I’m not even certain he was talking to me.

He asked if she was real. Maker, I wish I knew.

It’s not right that no one but me cares if Fenris is uncomfortable in illness-damp sheets.

Almost seventh bell, flames

Dozed off in the chair with the broken foot just before sixth bell. Didn’t come close to waking until a marvelously inconsiderate sunbeam punched me right in the eyes over Fenris’s windowsill, at which point I dropped my elbow off the armrest and gave myself whiplash trying not to tumble from the chair altogether.

Other arm stayed put, though, and Fenris didn’t even stir, which is the only reason I know he took hold of my hand while I was asleep—and possibly while he was asleep, which is the only reason I refuse to read more into it. His fingers were laced through mine, and the lyrium was humming ever so faintly, just enough that I could feel the—the shiver as I let him go.

I could have stayed there for hours, I think, if I hadn’t pulled the Void out of my neck sleeping sideways in that chair.

His color’s almost normal again, though he’s still a trifle wan. Thank you, Andraste. Not that I was worried.

I wasn’t worried. Anders said he’d be fine. I just wanted--someone this sick ought to have a friend take care of them until they’re well. Everyone deserves at least that much.

Ah, I think he’s beginning to wake up.

#fenris #hawke #fenris/hawke #dragon age #quark writes #hawke's journal tag #one thing long flights offer is uninterrupted writing time #on the other hand #suuuper tired on this #still! hope you like it!#i also got half the next one started so don't faint from shock if there's another one of these in a few days #otherwise this one would have been 4500 words long #which as much as i like long chapters is probs still a little much

65 notes · View notes

winterscream4 · 3 years

Text

No Works and No Days (Part 2)

Mountains of green…moving, crashing into black ravines.

Marlowe found something soothing about watching the cardiograph while he kept slipping in and out of consciousness. Always intrigued by all things weird and eerie, Marlowe had recently heard a radio transmission from Saturn, purportedly captured by NASA’s Cassini-Huygens probe. The caption on the UFOlogists’ website wrote: Aliens having a conversation on Enceladus. The machine’s recurrent beeping reminded him of that, although it did not so much sound like a discussion. More like, an alien mother’s lullaby.

Marlowe’s eyes, still twitching from the anesthesia scanned the hospital room’s environs. Medical tubes, tangling like jungle tendrils above him. Intravenous liquids travelling from translucent vales into Marlowe’s veins below. Pistachio green walls began to appear, beyond the post-surgery compression stockings that covered his feet. Thinking back to Quentin Tarantino’s first “Kill Bill” movie, Marlowe instinctively made an effort to move his toes, then his heels and ultimately to bend his legs. Between his knees, a strange shape started assuming form. It was the painting of a tree, shaded in the colors of the evening dusk, as its expanding branches multiplied into smudges and birds, fluttering towards the grey melancholy sky stretching above them. Marlowe’s eyes narrowed as the inkblots below, merged into letters. Titled “Return of the Fieldfares”, the painting, lodged inside a dark grey frame, was attributed to Devon landscape artist Stewart Edmondson. Devon…home to Katelyn Elizabeth Holmes, the woman who got him out of his seclusion right before Martin entered his life once more. It was a shame, things never worked out with her, but then again, how could they have? Marlowe’s only desire at the time was intrigue and excitement, a life worth of a classic detective mystery. And Holmes, well, a rose by any other name might have been sweeter. She was too deliberate, too eager…too easy to spread her legs and let him plug jumper cables on her vaginal lips just to get her and himself going. But Marlowe didn’t enjoy it one bit. Bondage, torture and domination may have worked in the moments when people like Roderick Prospero or Alexander Driskull mixed their personal and professional lives, but despite superficial urgings Marlowe always held deep feelings of repulsion against exerting control over another human being. After all, he had been the butt of that joke all too many times himself.

But maybe all that was a load of horseshit. After all, how could someone feel that degree of attraction for men like Martin without seeing a little of himself in there? Funny wasn’t it?

How after Martin injected him with the serum and tossed him in the ocean, his mind blended images of himself with those of Hyde? How, as he was being tossed around by the waves, memories and dreams merged into constellations of murder and insanity, pushing, compelling, forcing, beckoning him to…

“You’re up.”

The interjecting voice was soft but a little croaky. A woman, probably one, going through the flue. Marlowe moved his gaze to the direction of the voice, like a blind bat, navigating its cage through echolocation.

“I…”

Words were difficult. His throat was dry. He hadn’t smoked in a while, but the sensation was familiar, albeit taken to the extreme. Something soft and wet touched his lips. Velvet…nay…cotton…bandage strip dipped in water.

“Careful…” the voice instructed…directed, as tanned hands pushed his head forward. Marlowe’s body obeyed, although his eyes still blurring a bit, needed to verify its origins.

“There….There, we go…”

Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return sprang in Marlowe’s mind. This had happened before…back in 2013, when his nearly dead body was cast ashore a small island, a few miles away from the coast of Midvintersville. A man there, whispered the same thing as he had him sip drops from herbal tea. It tasted like dung mixed with vomit. But it saved his life. Still…that was his name. A man who faced the Black Glove in the past and ended up resigning from life, choosing to dwell as a hermit in an abandoned lighthouse.

The man Marlowe came to know as Still, even though he was certain this wasn’t his real name, had attempted to train him in combat, teach him the art of murder by the sword. He thought it was the only way to take down the four fingers of the Black Glove. He was wrong. The hand, beneath the Glove ended up strangling its own throat. Marlowe felt guilt surging through him, for not visiting Still since the day he left the isle…since the two men watched the clouds gather in the distance as the Storm of the Century was approaching. Lightening…

Light.

“Oh my God. I am so sorry!”

Marlowe grunted in irritation as he pushed his body away from the flash.

“I just needed to check your pupils, but we can do that later. Is that okay with you, Mr. Marlowe?”

“Mr. Marlowe”…There was a weird ring to it. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy the formality but with the last person who called him that, the interaction concluded with him getting shoveled on the back of his skull.

Several nonsense words ending in “y” were muttered before he finally got it right.

“Stanley…”

“Okay…Stanley.”

“Thhstanley!”…There was a pronounced lisp in her voice. Not that it took much away from its charm, but Marlowe couldn’t help but poke fun at it in his head. Little did he realize that, all those drugs had put his mind where his mouth was.

“Okay…bit of a dick move bro!”

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

The woman chuckled.

“I am kidding!” she exclaimed almost as if it was a plot twist. “After I had my appendix removed, I called my mother an Ugly Bitch! Can you believe that? So yeah, I get it, it’s the meds talking.”

Marlowe was too dizzy to respond. His stomach was churning but the usual acidic taste reaching the gullet before vomiting, wasn’t there just yet.

“I feel…”

“Yeah, I just put an antiemetic in your I.V. Give it a few minutes. Meanwhile, I wanted to give you this.”

Marlowe observed a hand entering his visual field. It was not as dark in complexion as he originally thought but had a golden tint to it instead. The fingers were long and hairless, the nails short and undyed but evidently manicured recently. As the fog began to clear from his eyes, he gazed upwards. The voice was revealed to have a face and a strange one at that. She was clearly far more tanned than most Canadians he’d encountered the previous two years; Latina but not exactly. Her nose bore that distinct feature of Golden Age illustrations, symmetrical but slightly pointing downwards. The lips, smiling gently at him, were unusually large. Little bit of lipstick, maybe, rotten apple in color. Her hair was cut short, reaching down a little below her shoulders. A very nineties style, reminiscent of Willow Rosenberg’s from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And the eyes, almost uncanny compared with her complexion. Almond shaped, hazel in color, purplish kind of, under the cold hospital lighting. There she stood, a petrol shirt tucked under her blank medical robe, formal trousers held together by a brown belt, visible just above the hospital’s mattress.

A weight was pushing down his chest. Marlowe glanced below. Henry David Thoreau’s greyscale portrait was starring right at him.

“The paramedics found it laying by your side in the woods.”

“Have you read it?” Marlowe toiled to speak as his lips had started to turn dry again.

“I am more of a “Civil Disobedience” kind of gal. But yeah, it’s a beautiful book.”

Most of, Whitman’s, Emmerson’s and Thoreau’s works were in a prominent place at the Winter Manor’s library. Marlowe had leafed through “Civil Disobedience” although by that point he scarcely remembered what it was about, lest for a few catchy quotes.

“The true place for a just man is the prison…or maybe the hospital…”

“Well” the woman replied as she adjusted the flow of his I.V. “Next time you want to play Socrates, you stick to wine and opium. Cause that Destroying Angel the doctors found in your system; man, was it a hustle to remove!”

Marlowe froze, flabbergasted. How could he have been that stupid? He’d read the books! The Destroying Angel mushroom had well-earned its name. It was rumored to be the most common source of fungi-ingested deaths in the Northern hemisphere, going for your kidneys and liver first before entering the blood. Then it starts fucking up the rest of you all the same. But then Marlowe’s mind harked back to another thing the woman had just mentioned. “The Doctors…?”. Wasn’t she one of them?

“You are not…a doctor?” he quizzed in a tone concealing hints of suspicion.

The woman smiled. Her lips grew weirded but strangely more compelling also.

“Mary Schwann. Neuropsychology PhD, from Berkley’s, specializing on the viral counter-myelination of neuronal tissue and neurodynamic psychotherapy.”

“I will need to see a C.V. on that…”

“Screw you.” The woman smiled again. “You are in good hands.”

“Was my brain…”

“Oh no, no! You are no worse off that you used to be. We did an fMRI just in case. But I do have some bad news.”

“Shit…”

“Your insurance mandates four hours of psychotherapy. Hence, you are going be stuck with me for a while. But first, we’re going to get you all better. The poison is now out of your system, so if my predictions are correct, you’ll be home by tomorrow.”

“And the therapy…?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you in my office by the end of the week.”

The woman checked her watch.

“Well, I have a few errands to run now, but I’ll be back to check in on you in the morning. It was very nice meeting you, Mister Walden.”

“It was nice meeting you…Civil Disobedience kind of gal.”

Even though Marlowe retained his suspicions after getting discharged, he spent many days and nights wishing she had called. A peculiar kind of sorrow surged through him as the months passed and the fear of getting sick from food poisoning again thrusted him into passing his days back under the sheets or in front of a laptop screen. Being a man, with a strong proclivity for the extremes, Marlowe turned his diet 180 degrees to the opposite direction. Wild weeds and nuts were replaced by beef and cheesesteak, forest greens by potato fritters, sumac and rose-dog beverages by Coke and Dr. Pepper and his sautéed mushroom meals were usurped by the Marlowe sub. Gaining pound upon pound, misery upon misery, Marlowe watched the seasons pass from the Winter Manor’s second floor balcony as 2019 came to a close and a virus, born as some say in an industrial town of China, crossed the Atlantic and forced Midvintersville and the entire western world into a seemingly endless lockdown.

As the news only spoke of ever-increasing case numbers, Marlowe found some solace, or perhaps willful self-numbing, in the digital world. Besides using the wi-fi to play video games like: Doom Eternal, Fortnite and Subnatica Below Zero on ps4 and for performing his seven-times-per-day log in to his Pornhub account, Marlowe occasionally used the internet to muse over facets of his old detective life. Since the last days of 2019, he had made accounts to various websites dealing with strange incidents taking place across the globe. Most of them were either hot spots for the kind of lunatics and disgruntled males that conspiracy businesses like QAnon thrived upon, or just plain second-rate creepy pasta. Then again, Marlowe thought about resorting to some law-enforcement websites he knew from his Criminology years at Cambridge, but in those days, police had become more fond of committing the crimes rather than solving them.

Almost by accident, Marlowe encountered an obscure blog titled “Curiosities and Monstrosities” which, at least in appearance, seemed a little more valid than the rest. The authors had recorded all known activities of the New York Ripper from 2011, some of which even Marlowe didn’t know about. They had also listed hundreds of cases, solved, unsolved and classified alike, from marginal misdemeanors to federal crimes, marked by unusual or inexplicable details.

Marlowe had made his own list of those that intrigued him most. A double homicide in Sleepy Hollows, Illinois, apparently committed by a drug-mule even though witnesses swore to have seen a black pumpkin engulfed in green flames, leaving the scene. Then there was that neighboring feud, turning ugly, with a nearby tenant claiming that both members involved possessed occult powers, with the man turning into a reptilian and the woman producing red, energy orbs out of her hands. And last, came the discovery of three bodies after a fire in a field, somewhere in the great out there of Texas, with one of them preserving a contorted face, as if it was still laughing, the other restrained against a sanguinello tree and the third being toothless, while having grown root like structures on the back of its head, as if it had just become one with the tree before burning to a crisp.

But all of that paled in comparison to the sheer numbers of deaths, committed by a smaller and far less theatrical assassin. The virus had already claimed the lives of almost 30 million people across the world. At the same time, politicians ignored or underestimated the virus, some claiming it a fraud while others recommending bleach as a potent cure against it. Sometimes, Marlowe pondered if an idiot in a position power could be more dangerous than the Black Glove, since at the very least they had a plan before inflicting their repertoires of corruption and atrocity.

Yet, by November 2020 things were getting a little more hopeful in Midvintersville. Even though the rest of Canada was still in peril, the summer-lasting lockdown imposed by Walter Greene, the town’s newly elected mayor, somehow seemed to work. A day before his birthday, as Marlowe browsed his computer for lockdown lifting news, he was all too astounded to find an unread email from the night before, marked with a familiar name at the top.

Mary Schwann. PhD.

Closing all google chrome windows on the side, Marlowe rushed to open the email, reading its contents aloud with a smile beaming across his face.

“U still owe me 4 hours of therapy. Lockdown’s lifted next week. U available?”

“PS: I hate the U’s but your file said you were born in 1979. I am a 1978. Need to appear younger. Lol.”

“PS: Hate the lols’ too.”

Marlowe did not need to ponder much. Thoughts of Mary Schwann being some sort of Black Glove assassin or a friend of Boisette’s aching for vengeance for the pulp of guts and bones that was left of him, crossed his mind but he was such an easy target to begin with, that all that trouble seemed counter-productive.

“Took you a while.” he typed, while trying to come up with some ridiculous piece of millennial slang to throw into his email.

“When we get our moment of exodus, I’ll be there. Care to meet at the old aqueducts, near the cemetery? Imao.”

“PS: I don’t know what Imao means. But it sounds a lot like a lost pygmy race from the Pacific archipelago.”

I ‘ve missed y…delete.

Marlowe jumped off his office chair, pacing towards the second floor’s ornate windowpanes. He pulled the burgundy curtains embroidered with golden floral patterns aside and gazed at the city looming beyond a vast stretch of black firs and daunting pines. The drizzle, descending in full strength across the day had ceased, and parting skies revealed the romantic glory of the solar star, disappearing beneath the Atlantic. A pal mal inevitably found itself between Marlowe’s lips. He huffed and he puffed and even though the taste was the same, it felt different for Marlowe had rarely ever smoked while feeling something akin to joy.

All the toy soldiers he was playing with before lay motionless against the dining table, next to a half-eaten Marlowe sub. James’ Bonsai was still there, facing the sunset while shading over the ruined faces of Marlowe’s long dead adversaries.

This will have to suffice. Marlowe thought. For now.

***********************************************************

Crooked rays of red light glimmered through the stained glass, as Vesper beckoned above the Opera House.

The floorboards creaked ominously, as if the night herself had dismounted from her celestial mare and was striding down the Opera’s archaic oaken panels. Streams of accumulated water from the day’s persistent drizzle were crossing through the underground tubing almost muffling the yelps and sobs, echoing from beneath the black hood.

A woman, or what was left of her. Her face covered by a crudely sewn ebony fabric, like the prisoners of Abu Ghraib; her body sealed in concrete. Her palms and legs below the calf, bruised by the cold and the damp and the beatings, extending from the dark grey surface, like the clay appendages used in ancient Rome as offerings to heal the ailing limps of the sufferers.

She was suffering. He had made sure of that.

Her left foot dangled in the air; the pain made worse by the itching. A single strip of gaze, wrapped around the bleeding blotch where her middle toe used to be, held together by a threadbare string of manilla rope. The marble floor below her had turned green and wet, from moisture and the saliva that had been trickling from her mouth for the past week, as the ball-gag more often than not inhibited her from swallowing properly. The gagging reflex made her head shake neurotically back and forth. Time had disappeared the moment she was captured, and days and nights had blended into a single pit of agony and fear of impending pain.

The noises issuing from her lips and body were those of a fox, whose foot had been lodged in a beartrap and her mouth had been muzzled so that she won’t be able to chew it off even if she wanted to. Only occasionally, they were interrupted, after passing out, when her brain allowed her a few moments of rest in unconsciousness.

But this was not one of those moments.

For right across her, the flickering light of a desk lamp that signaled his arrival had been turned back on again. And with it, returned the methodical, calculated almost, squeaking sound of his armchair as it resounded across the abandoned halls. Gradually, as the lamplight flared into existence, his torn linen cowl revealed itself; once a mask whole marked with a quarter note, symbolizing a man’s inner journey into music, art and childhood dreams, now a derelict mockery of its past significance. With the darkness dissipating, revealing the canvas of his art once more, his bronze teeth hummed an infernal melody while grinding through the flesh and nail and bone of the woman’s toe and ultimately swallowing it along with the few remaining hopes of her nightmare ever coming to an end.

0 notes

thisdaynews · 4 years

Text

Oksana Masters: Paralympic champion on Chernobyl, Tokyo 2020 and upbringing in Ukraine

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/oksana-masters-paralympic-champion-on-chernobyl-tokyo-2020-and-upbringing-in-ukraine/

Oksana Masters: Paralympic champion on Chernobyl, Tokyo 2020 and upbringing in Ukraine

Media playback is not supported on this device

Oksana Masters

Standing on a podium by Russia’s Black Sea coast, Oksana Masters felt a surge of pride as the anthems played. It wasn’t her first Paralympic medal, but this one was extra special.

She had just won cross country skiing silver at the Sochi Winter Games of 2014. As she held her prize, the flag of neighbouring Ukraine was raised for the winner, Lyudmila Pavlenko. Masters was herself born in Ukraine in 1989, three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She was born with severe physical defects caused by exposure to radiation.

In Sochi she was competing for the USA, the country where she grew up, an adopted child raised by a single mother. Returning to somewhere so close to the country of her birth had been a big motivation for qualifying to compete in Russia.

“It was kind of coming full circle,” she says. “It wasn’t my gold-medal moment, but it sure felt like it.”

Oksana’s moment would come. Four years later, two of the five medals she won at Pyeongchang 2018 were gold. And this year she will be competing on the Paralympic stage for a fifth time – at the summer Games of Tokyo 2020.

It will be another chapter in the remarkable life story Oksana shared with BBC World Service. A story that begins in the Ukrainian orphanage that was her home until the age of seven.

Masters says she and her mother “faced many unknowns together”

I have good and bad memories. I remember fields of sunflowers. I don’t know if it was because I was tiny but they seemed massive. There was also a plum tree and we didn’t get a lot of food so we would steal plums and pick seeds off the sunflowers.

Whenever I see sunflowers now, it’s a good memory because what you read about eastern European orphanages is pretty accurate. I definitely remember the really, really sharp pain in your stomach from being hungry all the time.

Right from birth I was put up for adoption. I was born with six toes, I was missing the main weight-bearing bones in my legs, my knees were floating – they weren’t supported by anything. My hands were webbed; I was born with five fingers, without thumbs. I don’t have a right bicep, I’m missing some organs. I have one kidney and don’t have any enamel on my teeth. When I came to America I found out that the only thing that can strip enamel before birth is radiation.

They linked it to Chernobyl because I was really not that far from there, and the fact that radiation levels continued to rise years after the explosion. It definitely lingered on years later to when I was born. There was also a power plant in the village of the orphanage that would go off frequently. Whenever the radiation was high there was this one cop who would drive round and tell us to board up the windows and doors, not to go out.

I’ve just finished watching the TV series Chernobyl. I knew parts of it. I knew that things went on behind the scenes to cover up the magnitude of it. It’s sad that it took away so many lives and homes. That part of the country will never be the same.

I don’t want to say I was a product of it but, out of something horrific, it’s about how you can see the potential and possibilities – like becoming an athlete – instead of dwelling on it.

Masters has grown up to compete at four Paralympics – with Tokyo 2020 set to be her fifth

When I was five I was called into the director’s office and they said: “We have a picture to show you – this is going to be your new mum.” When I saw her face, she had the warmest eyes and warmest smile.

She’d never met me. She made her adoption choice on a picture of me. Every day until she came to the orphanage I would ask the director: “Can I look at my mum?”

Sometimes, if I wasn’t good – because I was a troublemaker – then the director would use it against me and be like: “You can’t look at the picture today. You’re a bad girl. This is why she’s not coming, because you don’t listen.” Because the process took two years I started to believe that. But her picture kept me going.

She fought for me for two years, and then she came and saw the situation I was living in. When she walked in the hallway there were people chipping away at the ice on the floor because the radiators had frozen.

Masters’ adoptive mother, a professor at the University at Buffalo in New York state, knew that her daughter’s left leg would have to be amputated. She had the operation at the age of nine, after moving to the US. In 2001, Masters’ mother moved the family after taking a new position at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. A year later Masters became a double amputee.

In an Instagram caption to this picture, Masters wrote: “Mom, no words will ever come close to describe how much I love you and how amazing you are. I cherish this picture of us so much and your smile is all I need to feel complete and loved.”

I didn’t know I was different until I came to America. It was only then I realised that everything I had experienced was not normal.

I was diagnosed with ‘failure to thrive’ – basically starving to death. When I turned eight, I was 34 inches tall and weighed 36 pounds – that’s a pretty healthy three-year-old here in the US! I had to wear toddler-sized clothes for my first couple of years.

Now that we’re older and we can talk about her experience, I respect how hard it was for my mum. It was nearly impossible for a single parent to adopt. She had to do multiple psychiatric tests, with people asking ‘why are you single? What’s wrong with you? Where’s your husband?’

I didn’t realise all the struggles that go into adoption. I can’t imagine how she faced that before she came across and met me for the first time. It shows her strength and her pure heart. Any parent who adopts kids is a pure gift but my mum doing it on her own is on a whole new level.

She knew my left leg had to go – it was six or seven inches shorter – so it was amputated when I was nine. That was hard but it was harder when I was 13 and the doctors told me they couldn’t save my right leg.

For the longest time, I wasn’t ready, because I knew what I was missing after the first amputation. I knew how limited things became for me. But the pain in my right leg had become unbearable and I said ‘OK, I’m ready, under one condition – I can keep my knee’.

A lot of people don’t realise that amputees aren’t all the same. Your leg has an ankle and knee – two joints – so I didn’t want to be missing four joints.

They said that was OK but right before I went on the operating table they said ‘we’re going to amputate above the knee’. I was so sedated I didn’t know what was going on, but I will never forget that feeling of waking up in hospital. I tried to get up but didn’t have that leverage from my legs anymore and fell backwards. That was really hard. Honestly, I still have a bit of frustration and anger about that.

In the end, it was to avoid having more surgeries down the line but it was weird because I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to that leg because I didn’t know I’d be missing all of it.

Oksana also had multiple surgeries to both hands and began adaptive rowing in 2002. She would go on to win Paralympic bronze in 2012 – her first medal – partnering Rob Jones in the mixed double sculls. For Sochi 2014, she switched to cross country skiing.

Masters celebrates her first Paraylmpic gold medal at the 2018 Winter Games – she won both the 1.5km sprint classic sitting and 5km sitting events in cross country skiing

The first person that mentioned the Paralympics and racing internationally was Randy Mills [Louisville adaptive rowing club’s programme director]. I’m so competitive, I hate to lose, and he saw that. All I needed was that fitness guidance to get to the next level.

I looked up the Paralympics in 2008 and I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool!’ I didn’t have a visual of someone that is like me, missing both legs, but racing for the USA at a high level. It took until London 2012 for me to realise: ‘I belong here.’ Then I dedicated everything to it.

Before those Games, Masters posed nude for ESPN’s Body Issue.

I struggled a lot with my self-confidence as a girl. It’s the end of the world if you’re having a bad hair day or you have a pimple on your face for school picture day, let alone if you have prosthetic legs and hands that are hard to cover up.

Masters will be completing in the cycling events at the Tokyo Paralympics this summer

Then society has put this label on you, even though you don’t see yourself as ‘disabled’. That’s something that’s put on you.

I don’t want the next generation of young girls and kids to grow up not having that person to look up to and want to aspire to. Every kid had a picture of Michael Jordan on their wall. Why can’t it be a normal thing for that to be someone who has had an accident or was born with a disability? I don’t want to say that because it’s not a ‘disability’. That’s just a term society as a whole has put over everybody that looks different.

I believe that seeing is believing and the more times you see the Paralympics or a Para-athlete, the more normal it’s going to become to the person that doesn’t know what it is. It’s really cool to watch that growth.

Masters won a bronze and silver medal at Sochi 2014 – both in cross country skiing. Four years later at Pyeongchang 2018 she won her first gold. At those Games, she and her partner Aaron Pike became four-time Paralympians. Now, Masters has reverted to cycling for Tokyo 2020, having just missed out on a medal at Rio 2016.

Aaron’s such a patient person. I don’t know how anyone can deal with my chaos. We started skiing together at the same time and spend the whole winter together so we push each other in training.

He’ll get me on the downhills but I’m like ‘haha, see ya’ on the uphills because I climb faster than him. We can’t switch off the competitive switch. If we play Monopoly and you’re winning, it’s not going to be a good experience for you!

But having someone like Aaron there is great on the training days when you’re finding every excuse to not want to be there. You look over and it’s your best friend, your partner, your team-mate. He’s not just a great boyfriend. He has the same amount of genuine want for other people to do well and shares it with the team.

At Tokyo, the main goal is to win both of my events in the road race and time trial. In Rio I had limited time to really prepare because I was still spending my season nordic skiing and I transitioned within a few months.

I definitely have unfinished business going into Tokyo.

#Tokyo #upbringing

0 notes

angstymarshmallow · 7 years

Text

By Chance Part 1 - Drake x MC (A Royal Romance Mini-Fanfic Series)

[A little Note: I kept thinking what ifs since the chapter update last week and have decided to indulge in an idea I had from If Things Were Different another fanfic I wrote about Drake and MC meeting differently, and meeting first. Edit: Part 2]

[Summary: A twist of fate has collided MC and Drake right into each other. Meeting for the first time under far different circumstances, MC doesn’t know why Drake feels so familiar, as if her soul has known him from a different life.]

Serendipity; finding something good without looking for it.

Moving to New York begun as many dreams did for Riley. Exciting, exuberant. One filled with hope, and a longing for something more. A chance to be something more. Her sense of adventure brought her; because she wanted to find here where she could not find anywhere else.

The Big Apple in all it’s intimidating glory was supposed to make her better, to give life meaning and fill the empty void she had always suffered in the safety of her hometown. However, it didn’t take long for Riley to realize that wistful thinking could only push her so far. Things did not happen by chance, people had to make them happen.

A sigh escaped Riley’s lips as she propped on elbows along the bar counter and stared pensively across the room. Her eyes halted at the last table of the night, the only people left inside the dingy diner.

Everyone else had cleared out, and the rest of her fellow employees had turned in as soon as their shifts were over. Friday nights were supposed to be spent out until the wee hours of the morning. So she had always been told anyway, but more often than not, Riley never made plans that lasted until three am in the morning. She couldn’t under the responsibility of caring her cat and the prospect of her waiting at home with her tiny whiskers pressed up against her apartment door.

Except the last table of her miserable shift stood between her and freedom. She wanted to toss in the towel for the night, and barely ignored the urge to use her commanding waitress tone on the rowdy guests left inside.

It was a group of them, younger than herself - college kids which had a little too much to drink and were becoming increasingly loud and obnoxious, the longer she watched them.

How had she gotten here? When did doing good translate into what was starting to feel like eternal punishment? She cursed herself for her inability to say no. Friday nights were not apart of her usual shift, but after her friend had begged her to switch because of pressing family matters; she didn’t hesitate to and had unknowingly doomed herself to this hell.

But it wasn’t all bad, she decided as she dropped her cloth back onto the counter. On the plus side; she could use the extra money. If she wanted to pay the mountain of tuition debt left behind after graduating, she needed every source income she could grab her hands on. Briefly, she wondered how much she could sell a kidney for on the black market but thought better of it as her thoughts returned to the present once more.

She grumbled under her breath as her hands aimlessly wiped the counters. This was how she decided to pass the time, hoping at least one scatter-brained man across from her would take the hint and suggest to the rest of his friends to leave.

No such luck.

Mercifully, when the clock which hung securely from the wall opposite of her finally struck ten, she could utter the words she had been thinking ever since they arrived. “Last call, boys.”

She heard a groan followed by loud protests, as they beckoned for another pint. Rolling her eyes, she acquiesced and gathered the substance before dropping it by their table.

They ogled her as she straightened, their expressions mixed with grand stupor and lust in their hastiness at giving her an appreciative once-over.

“Not even if this was your last day on Earth.” She curtly said, eyeing each one of them with impatient brows before folding her arms. “I’ll call you a cab, but otherwise this is probably the last conversation we’re having for the rest of the night.” After a beat she added, “and probably ever.”

One of them snickered, exchanged a lewd comment before focusing their attention back to their drinks.

She rolled her eyes and ignored the stab of annoyance she felt. She was used to it. She didn’t like it, but she tolerated it so long as the tips were good. And yet, this stood as another reminder why she needed to find something better. Something better. Something she could actually enjoy; and not worry about the prying eyes of college boys.

She called them a cab and begun closing up for the night. She wiped tables, rearranged chairs, carefully placed and restocked behind the bar, before double checking that everything was in order and prepared for her co-workers on the weekend.

By the time she glanced absently at the table of drunken men settled in the furthest corner, they rose from their seats and stumbled towards the entrance. They held onto each other, whispering loudly enough for her to hear but still pretend to ignore.

She watched them go, with her pinky fingers locked behind her back. Unless one of them collapsed before reaching the door, she didn’t feel inclined to help them. But after picking up their receipts and seeing the generous tip they left her, she reassured herself by poking her head outside, just in time to spot the cab they disappeared into.

She closed back the door and rested against it for a moment. Friday had been long and grueling. The crowd at night weren’t the same customers during the day and her shoulders sagged with relief of another day finally done.

She rubbed her temples before glancing at the clock again. It was nearly eleven when she left, scooping her apartment keys and tucking her boots under her arm as she did one final check before leaving the quaint diner.

She had forgotten her essentials - a jacket and an umbrella she had forgotten in her great haste to make it to her shift on time. She walked at a comfortable pace before checking her for for the transit schedules. But among feeling a sudden drop of water splashing by the front of her own, she hastily dropped it inside her pocket’s slacks and as she watched the sky turn miserably grey, she wondered what kind of cruel person nature was. And why she was the only one seeming to suffer from it. As soon as she begun feeling droplets of water spilling across her cheeks, she picked up her pace.

Her luck really couldn’t have been any worse.

It didn’t take her long to spot one; they were scattered along the city and one couldn’t walk far before making out their slightly cylinder shapes. She quickly crossed the street with her arm half obscuring her vision before finding sanctuary underneath the shelter’s shade.

“Things really couldn’t get any worse.” She hadn’t realized she had spoken a loud until she heard a deeper voice snort beside her.

Her eyes scan the shelter and she realized with a jolt that she was not alone. In this dim light, she could make out his hair, an unruly dark brown that was swept into a lose bun. His clothes were nowhere near as damp as hers as his blue jacket seemed to have kept him mostly dry.

His eyes were dark as was his expression when he met her stare. “Someone always says that, and then it always gets worse.”

He had an accent, thick - European. She has never heard something quite so lyrically pleasing before, as if every word pronounced was done with deliberation - it sounded Greek but not completely. It took her a few seconds to push past his accent in deciphering his casual tone. Absently, she wondered what had brought him here. New York City’s tourist season was nearly at its end.

“Not true.” She said almost automatically, a reflex of hers from her rebellious youthful days. “What’s the worst that can happen?” It was already Friday and she was stuck outside. What else could make this worse?

It was as if nature had intended to mock her itself. Minutes after speaking, they both winced at the sound of thunder booming and the sight of lightning crackling in the distance. “Awww, come on really?” Exasperated, she glanced up at the sky. Had she not suffered enough?

“See? I told you - every time.” The man beside her sounded amused.

Her shoulders stiffened. She didn’t take kindly to people proving her wrong or making her feel silly for that matter, especially when it was someone she didn’t know.

Stubbornly, she marched over to the other side of the shelter, the part less covered intending to place as much distance as she could between them. He didn’t seem perturbed by her sudden indifference, rather when she peeked at him again - his shoulders had visibly relaxed as if he was more comfortable with her being further away to begin with.

The downpour of steady droplets fell harder than before in a matter of minutes and she shivered as the wind picked up. The more she stood and shivered, the more she wished she was at home with her cat instead, curled up on her sofa with a comfy blanket and binge-watching her favorite tv-show with a tub of ice cream in front of her. Why was it today of all days of the week?

She knew why, her attention had shifted elsewhere; on the mountain of bills pooling by the front of her apartment and the fact that she was behind this month’s rent. Those were all signs that she needed a better job, but she kept telling herself it could wait and everyday that passed, she had the same excuses

Her mind drifted back to the present - she would give anything right about now to be outside of this rain.

As if reading her thoughts, she heard the man grumble beside her. “You’d think a woman would have the good sense to carry her jacket when dealing with this weather.”

New York could be as predictable as it could be volatile. The weather woman had mentioned the possibility of rain but one she hadn’t considered seriously. The morning had been unforgivably hot. “And you’d think a man would have the good sense to offer his jacket.” She muttered back, hugging herself and rolling her eyes. “But alas, chivalry is dead.”

She wasn’t sure if she was hearing him clearly as another clash of thunder assailed her ears but she could have sworn he was snickering.

A low rumble came from his throat.

Usually she liked making small talks with the people she met, because most of the time, she believed everyone had an interesting story to tell. But this man was different, frustratingly so. The earlier moments of familiarity had been forgotten long enough for her to realize he was only adding to her terrible day. All she wanted to was for the transit to magically appear and put her out of her misery.

Silence clung to them as Riley shifted on her feet. She was tempted to break it, as the only sound they were both acutely aware of were her own teeth, chattering. The cold seemed to fasten around her, sweeping her skin and leaving her with undeniable chills.

She refused to look at him directly, but couldn’t help taking a small peek from the corner of her eyes. Her view wasn’t good enough; certainly not for her to analyze whether or not he was a good looking tourist - or one of those crazy strangers you spent avoiding after meeting eye contact with.

She heard him utter a resigned sigh, and she flushed a little when his eyes shifted back to her. “Look, do you want to borrow my jacket?”

She forced a smile she didn’t feel as he waited for her answer. “No thanks. I-I-I w-wouldn’t want t-to put you out of place.” She wanted to be irritated, to be angry at the suggestion. It only came after the complaint of her forgetfulness, and after all - she neither cared for pity or charity. But every word came out as a pathetic squeak; she was tumbling over them as quickly as she was shaking. Could things get any more depressing?

“Don’t be stupid, you’ll freeze to death.” He sounded as if he would actually care if she did - a complete stranger.

She turned to him and saw a flash of genuine curiosity and warmth inside his eyes which, quite frankly surprised her. “Alright.” She stepped closer until their shoulders brushed and his arm cautiously came around her.

She was suddenly aware of the man’s breath so close to her ear, or the familiarity she felt at being so close, as if this wasn’t the first time they had crossed paths. It made no sense to her, she was sure she didn’t recognize him and yet her heart was telling her a different story. She leaned into him a little without thinking and flushed when she realized how strangely natural it felt to, as if they had met before.

Together underneath the bus shelter, they shared his jacket.

If she turned to look at him, she would have had the perfect view of his face. To see what her mystery stranger looked like. But suddenly the idea struck her as awkward and as it was scary - her stomach was simply disconcerted at the thought. She would be embarrassed if he caught her abrupt stare.

“So, great weather we’re having.” She announced suddenly, and then immediately regretted it.

Smooth move Riley, real smooth. She did this whenever she was around someone she didn’t know - said things that sometimes, made few sense. A strained and sometimes foolish way of coping with uncomfortable and un-predicated practicality.

Already, she could tell by the sudden tension and rigidness beside her; he probably would have preferred if she stopped talking. “I mean it’s not really great per say,” she continued on because he hadn’t said anything. “It could be better especially on a Friday night, you know?”

He didn’t respond.

Nerves kept her talking, “I mean really what’re the odds that this kind of weather would happen on a Friday of all days?” A hesitation, “despite the fact that there was a small chance it would rain -”

“Do you always talk this much to people you’ve only just met?” His response was curt, a little chilling. “Must get tiring.”

Her irritation flared, like a new-born fire that refused to be doused. Oh the nerve of some men! She wanted to give him a piece of her mind with that attitude. She could feel his eyes on her in the same breath that her eyes glanced up at his.

Their eyes had finally met for the first time.

Her throat went dry.

There was a sudden heat to her chest that had nothing to do with how warm he felt next to her. A strange and yet familiar feeling spread, and lingered in a way that his eyes does on her face.

There was something about him.

About this.

She couldn’t place it but something about this called to her.

She sucked in a deep breath.

Her reply was lost in between his steady gaze; the way they widened just a little before flashing in intimate recognition - as if he felt it too. Until finally, they both looked away.

Her heart had suddenly picked up speed - badump, badump, banging wildly inside her chest. Her hands felt useless by her side and she dived them into her front pockets. Badump, badump - she was afraid it was loud, too loud and the fear of him hearing it’s sound made her try to step back.

She tried to create some much needed space in between them; she just needed to remember how to breathe again. Except with every movement she made to untangle herself, her head and arms protested. She had forgotten they were still tied to his jacket.

“Sorry, I -” She bit her bottom lip to stop herself from continuing. Awkwardly, she tried to duck from under his jacket, until he took it off completely.

Surprised, she watched as he settled the entire piece of clothing around her shoulders. The weight was oddly comforting. “What’re you -”

“Can’t have your teeth chattering again.” He didn’t look at her, however there was a half smile on his lips, “it was overbearingly annoying.”

She wanted to say something, but all she could come up with was a grateful smile. “Thank you, Mr -”

“It’s just Drake.” He finished, inclining his head at her.

“Nice to meet you Just Drake.” She smirked at his sudden frown. “I’m Riley-Robyn Tinsely but - just Riley; to most of my friends anyway.” She held out a cold, wet hand to shake his.

He examined it before grasping her hand in a firm yet steady grip. “Alright Tinsley, do you happen to know when this bus will get here?”

A laugh escaped her throat. “Soon, I’m sure of it.”

They waited in silence, except the quiet stillness between them was different. It changed from the stifling awkwardness it had been minutes ago and felt almost companionable. As if they were two people who simply knew each other, before Drake humored her on what he thought of American weather.

Minutes went by like this and with each fleeting moment, they grew more comfortable and gave little bits of information to each other in order to pass the time. Until, they realized with surprise; they were waiting on separate buses.

Hers arrived first. She hesitated for a moment when they locked eyes again; and she felt herself being pulled by his dark eyes to stay. As ludicrous at that sounds, she was half-tempted to ask where he was heading before thinking better of it. Waving and uttering a soft goodbye, she rushed to catch last shuttle home.

He watched her go with an absent half-smile on his lips. Until he felt it growing into an almost smile, he paused to check the time. So far, America was beginning to teach him things - different experiences than what he had grown up with in Cordonia.

Good different - but nonetheless, with it’s offbeat and yet distinctive charm - New York was turning into a more complicated and intriguing place than he thought it would.

The woman was right; the bus hadn’t taken long after. However, as he stepped with intent to board the vehicle, he noticed something flashing from the corner of his eyes. A gleaming screen every few seconds; a few short paces from where the American woman stood only minutes ago.

He glanced at it for a few seconds before pocketing it and heading inside the bus.

A funny feeling settled over him, one he couldn’t shake, and as a man who didn’t believe in fate or superstition - a part of him had an uncanny awareness; this wasn’t going to be last of seeing Tinsley. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake this. Unfortunately, at the time he didn’t know just how right he was going to be.

#drake x mc #this has been sitting on and off in my drafts for days #i really wanted to write it #but will i finish it #playchoices #chocies stories you play #the royal romance #that's another problem entirely #i should stop staying up so late #long post #i think i just wanted to write them a happy fic #feedback is always appreciated!

108 notes · View notes

dcnativegal · 7 years

Text

Compulsion & Identity

Ruminations of a Certified Alcohol & Drug Counselor--Intern

I’m sitting in one of the group therapy sessions with clients who have kept sober from a variety of substances for months or perhaps only days. They pee into a cup or suck on a saliva stick to prove their sobriety to me and their probation officers. They are biding their time and showing up and jumping through hoops that include community service, visits to Treatment Court, and paying off probation fines. Each one of them has harrowing stories. I have so much respect for them. Even when I know for sure they are flat out lying.

I’m trying to understand what it’s like, mentally, emotionally, and socially as they maneuver through their lives and all their important relationships as a sober person. We talk about it. One person admitted, I still don’t know who I am, sober. I know I was funnier when I was high…

I’m learning all about “Substance use disorder” which is the newest term. (No longer abuse, and less use of the term ‘addiction.’) I have a stack of books with titles like “Buzzed” and “Uppers and Downers.” I remember from my early social work training that there is a stunting of brain maturation when a person starts using a substance regularly. Each of these people starting using as young teenagers. The growing human learns to navigate through life with the help of the mellowing effects of pot, the mania and energy of meth, the disinhibitions of alcohol. There are supremely stupid choices that are made under the influences. They don’t know how to deal with frustration, with a broken heart, with the moments included under the umbrella: ‘shit happens.’

I don’t know anyone who deals with ‘shit happens’ perfectly. Well, maybe the Dalai Lama, and the late great Maya Angelou.

My personal drugs of choice are carbs and yarn. Carbs may kill me in the end. I’ve developed pancreatitis, in large part because it’s a side effect of an injectable drug that worked well for me for a couple of years. The other part of why is, simply, gluttony. (Noun. Habitual greed or excess in eating. Ouch. Literally.) My side started hurting in December, and I self-diagnosed kidney stones, so upped the liquids. Didn’t get into see my family nurse practitioner until mid-January. NOT kidney stones but pancreatitis. What the…? Clear liquids for me. Who knew that there are dozens of kinds of broth. Although the pain did not disappear, it lessened, and the lipase and other lab values went down to normal when I stuck to liquids. When I eat solids again, the pain and labs worsen. So I’ve been off and on solid food for a while. Every one to two weeks, I give a couple of vials of blood and 3 hours later, my nurse scolds me. Kinda like peeing into a cup, or sucking a saliva test strip. Clean UA? Good labs? It depends on behavior.

Humbling.

A client ‘bangs’ (injects) meth. I indulge in a cookie, or three. Not equivalent, exactly. But pancreatitis is dangerous. Meth is, too.

When ‘shit happens’ to me, which includes simply a bad day, I realized some time ago that I have a sense of entitlement, of somehow ‘deserving’ the special treat of new yarn, or a Peppermint Patty. Because…. Insert self justification here…. I can imagine that some of the same justification goes on in the mind of people who use meth or pot or beer compulsively. “I’ve been good… It was a shitty day… Fuck you, bossy bitch, I’m going out… “ As I stand in the checkout line at Safeway, I’m like, I’m tired, just one Peppermint Patty won’t kill me…

Dark chocolate, ice cream, cookies. I’ve heard alcoholics say that if there’s alcohol in the house, it calls to them. Same for me with chocolate. Valerie hides it. At the moment, I think we are totally out. Which is good. (I found her stash. ‘Bye, ‘bye stash. I am a gluttonous theif.) I’ve been keeping a pile of tiny chocolates in my office for my clients. I give up. They’re all gone now. I couldn’t resist them. I’ll put stress balls in the box that held the mini-snickers and Twix. The Twix were very popular. I was especially fond of the mini-Milky Ways with dark chocolate. Val discovered Russell Stover’s sugar free peppermint patties. Oh. My. God. They are now on the banned list, even though they are sugar free. Even after I start feeling sick, I can eat 10 at a sitting. Like the rat hitting the cocaine water until he dies.

I knew someone who had a compulsion to use pornography. The idea would take root and next thing, that person would be walking into a strip club. Feeling disgusted later, dirty and depressed, the urge would diminish for a while, until the next time. My basic feeling about this whole arena is: tip the sex worker very well and be respectful. But, the compulsion, if it harms relationships with real live humans outside the club, is a problem. Not to mention how porn distorts what men think women actually enjoy.

Cravings.

Chocolate or yarn doesn’t HAVE to be a problem, but for me it is. Everything in moderation, except for me with sugar or yarn. I can ignore a wine bottle. No interest in illegal drugs. But keep sugar away from me. And no more yarn… hm… until I hit the new Willows store in Christmas Valley again. Seed planted, insert rationalization: I’m supporting an independent local business! (I think this is called ‘stinkin’ thinking’. )

What is your ‘self medication’ of choice, dear reader?

Weed, which seems to be the drug of choice for teens in Lake County is a mixed bag. Pun intended. It made me paranoid and more anxious than I already was when I used it in college. It’s legal in some states but federally illegal. The medical marijuana card is a great thing for those who need it. I’ve seen the videos with people who have Parkinson’s go from violent tremors to graceful movement. For young people, though, I’ve seen it among my kids’ friends, how all motivation seems to vanish. It is the slacker’s drug of choice. I have teenaged clients who are mandated to see me because of weed, and they pee into a cup. I want for them every ounce of motivation to get them out of poverty and do well in school, find a trade, make a better living than their parents.

Our group discussion gave me a chance to revisit my own struggles with identity, as well as my own compulsive behavior. Perhaps there is a parallel between my deep discovery in my early 40s that I am really and truly gay and my clients’ growing familiarity with their sober selves. For me, it was 2003. My husband had given me permission to figure out whether or not I was gay, bi, whatever. He’d had a serious heart attack, and earnestly pointed out that life is short. What a gift. What insanity. This journey led to the end of our marriage, which was a hard and painful process but also, to lives lived with authenticity. Thank goddess for therapists. The kids survived and thrived, and he has been with a lovely, gifted, hilarious and STRAIGHT woman for something like 10 years. I have been with the cowhand for nearly 6.

What made that part of my history relevant, perhaps, to the path of the newly sober, is that I had to regroup my identity. As my children’s father put it, I’d changed teams. Not only was I on a different team, that team had a culture, a lingo, a look and feel that was perceptible by something called ‘gaydar’ which I had the beginnings of but really needed to step up. I rented every classic lesbian movie I could find, and some of them were terrible, but all of them taught me something. As a feminine-appearing gay woman, I needed to learn about femmes and femme culture since I am so not a butch. I read Joan Nestle, founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the hilarious Leslea Newman who wrote, ‘Out of the Closet with Nothing to Wear’, and the classic, “Heather has two Mommies.” I watched lesbians, especially in lesbian spaces. I learned about my own body, my own range of gender expression.

I moved to the Oregon Outback to be with my sweetie full time instead of half the year, and out here, I miss gay space (like a gay bar, community center, or Pride event), other gay people, any tiny glimpse of a gender bending queer sensibility.

We all feel this way, in each of our identities. Jewish people feel more comfortable when surrounded by other Jews. Women feel relaxed when there are no men present, and vice versa. Alcoholics can avoid the stigma when they are with other alcoholics. Ranchers enjoy the company of other ranchers.

Just this past week I met, FINALLY, another gay person who lives in Lake County. This person is married, and so now I know there are FOUR GAY PEOPLE IN LAKE COUNTY. We’ll have a tiny gay pride parade in our living room come June, with a very large rainbow flag.

For my newly sober clients, it’s an adventure to learn who they are with their families, with their wives or husbands or girlfriends or boyfriends, with their employers, at their church. To say to their children, “yes, I have messed up, and I’m getting it together. No need to be sarcastic with me. I am still your parent.” They seek out the company of others in recovery to survive. There are several twelve step meetings in the county, thank goodness. Since all of my clients started using in their early teens, there is a lot of growing up to do, all the while they have very real and heavy adult responsibility. It’s a lot to manage, in a punitive and financially strapped environment.

For the sober, a hot bath has to take the place of a beer, or a bowl. All of those strong emotions cannot be mediated by a substance. Frustration? Anger? Sadness? How does one deal with those without an upper or a downer? And if I have a rough day, I do not have to buy a Peppermint Patty.

I seek to relate to them and their stories, even while I immerse myself in online courses about substance use disorder. It’s a bit narcissistic, I know, to search for my own parallel struggle to humanize theirs. But as Anne Lamott once so wisely said, I am the turd around which the world revolves.

On New Year’s Eve, I went to Soul Collage at Toni’s house in Paisley, and made a New Year’s mandala (which I shared a picture of, two posts ago.) In the center is a primate surrounded by bananas, and around the primate were examples of embodiment, words of encouragement, and healthy foods. It was shortly into 2017 that I was diagnosed with pancreatitis. I am now FORCED by my side pain and bad labs to get my eating act together, out of the realm of gluttony. Be careful what you wish for.

I went to Soul Collage again recently, and created two cards to help me tell the story of my clients, and also my own story. They depict the journey from serious faces to happy faces, with stops at

· Know thine enemy and maybe befriend them, (the man and the skunk, the user and the dealer, the lesbian and the Trumpette)

· Find your people and cuddle up to them to rest (like a pile of kittens)

· Be creative in all things, with colored pencils or your new sense of who you can be now

· Get used to feeling your feelings including the negative ones. They will not kill you. Smoking or ‘banging’ them away is procrastination. So are Peppermint Patties.

· Do the work. No way to short cut the work. Carry the water that needs carrying and don’t be a whiney child about it. I know it’s a bitch to be a grownup and exercise self-control when other people are allowed to be such pains in the asses!!! Remember: sometimes, I AM THAT BITCH.

· Allow time for joy, for running free, for deeply enjoying pleasure that doesn’t carry guilt. Find that joy if it’s new to you, the guilt-free kind! (Salad? Sigh. Knitting with the yarn I already own? YES.)

· Make a home within yourself if not in the outside world. Make that home cozy and full of love. Beautiful and familiar. Full of life and healing. (I’m ALWAYS working at this, the finding and maintenance of home…)

The journey to sobriety, to a whole and generous life, is not a straight line, more like a circle or a spiral, hopefully forward. All the same, as Proust said,

The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

#sobriety recovery

5 notes · View notes

kansascityhappenings · 4 years

Text

Doctors are shaking their heads at new COVID-19 symptom some patients are experiencing

NEW YORK — In hospitals around the world, doctors are shaking their heads in disbelief as they watch COVID-19 patients who should be comatose or “seizing” from hypoxia — a lack of oxygen in the body’s tissues — check social media, chat with nurses and barely complain of discomfort while breathing.

Some have dubbed them “happy hypoxics,” a terrible misnomer for what could be a long, slow recovery — or worse.

The proper medical term is “silent hypoxia.” It happens when people are unaware they are being deprived of oxygen and are therefore showing up to the hospital in much worse health than they realize.

Typically, these patients have experienced some COVID-19 symptoms for two to seven days before they show up at the hospital complaining of sudden chest tightness or an inability to breathe deeply, said Dr. Richard Levitan, who’s been an emergency room physician for some 30 years.

While he practices at Littleton Regional Healthcare in New Hampshire, Levitan recently spent almost two weeks volunteering in the emergency room of a New York City hospital near the epicenter of the city’s devastating outbreak.

There he watched patients come into the emergency room with blood oxygen levels as low as 50%, so low they should have been incoherent, even unconscious. Normal blood oxygen saturation is between 95% and 100%, and anything below 90% is considered abnormal.

In addition, Levitan said, scans of these patients’ lungs showed signs of pneumonia so severe they should be in terrible pain as they gasp for their next breath.

“Their X-ray’s looked awful, their oxygen was terrible, and yet they’re completely awake, alert on a cell phone, and they all said is they’ve been somewhat sick for days,” he said.

“And then only recently did they notice either shortness of breath or fatigue or something else,” Levitan added. “That’s what is so fascinating about this disease and also so terrible.”

It’s terrible because by the time a person realizes they are having trouble taking a deep breath and reaches out for help, they are already dangerously sick.

“Some may ultimately require a ventilator.” Levitan said, “As levels of carbon dioxide rise, fluid builds up in the air sacs and the lungs become stiff, leading to acute respiratory failure.”

How can this happen?

Doctors speculate that, for some people, COVID-19 lung problems progress in a way that isn’t immediately apparent. As patients focus on battling such symptoms as fever and diarrhea, the body begins fighting back against the lack of oxygen by speeding up breathing to compensate.

“Just imagine that you had a full glass of air, and now that cup becomes half full,” said critical care pulmonologist Dr. Cedric Rutland, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.

“What are you naturally going to do? You’re going to try to fill it twice as fast because you lost half,” said Rutland, who is also a assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Riverside.

People may not be aware of their more rapid breathing rate and don’t seek help, yet blood oxygen levels continue to fall. In the meantime, the body slowly becomes somewhat adjusted to the lower levels of oxygen, much like what happens when a person travels to a higher altitude.

By the time these patients get to the hospital with crippled lungs and crashing oxygen levels, “this has been taking place for a bit of time.” Rutland said. “So your body is kind of used to it.”

Yet the damage has already taken place. Not only are the lungs severely ravaged, the lack of oxygen may have already comprised other organs in the body, such as the heart, kidneys and brain.

A silent hypoxia that progresses rapidly to respiratory failure may explain why some younger COVID-19 patients with no underlying health conditions have died suddenly after not experiencing any serious shortness of breath.

Trying to avoid ventilators

Early in the crisis, doctors were putting nearly everyone who came in with breathing difficulties on ventilators. Now they reserve those for the severely sick, realizing that other measures, such as supplemental oxygen and body positioning, may work just as well for some patients.

Levitan coauthored a recent paper in which doctors offered 50 patients supplemental oxygen instead of ventilators and positioned them on their sides and tummy, positions often used to help open the lower lungs.

“We found two out of three patients can avoid a ventilator during the first 24 hours by putting them on oxygen and doing these positioning maneuvers, such as laying them prone on their stomach,” he said.

Keeping patients off ventilators is a huge win-win for doctors and patients. Ventilators are scarce and need to be reserved for the sickest of patients. But even if every hospital had a surplus of ventilators, there are many reasons to try other methods first.

In addition to a tube inserted down the nose into the stomach or surgically implanted into the trachea via the throat, patients can have tubes implanted for feeding and to use the restroom.

Breathing tubes aren’t pleasant. Many patients require multiple sedatives so they don’t pull them out. Bacteria can easily grow, causing “ventilator-associated pneumonia.” There is an increased risk of blood clots.

Finally, people on ventilators have to be “weaned off,” a painful and scary experience during which some people struggle. Once they do manage to reduce their dependence, about a third of patients on ventilators come out of the experience with anxiety, depression or delirium, often referred to as “ventilator brain.”

Early detection is key

Levitan recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he called for earlier diagnosis of COVID-19 respiratory concerns by having people with mild symptoms use pulse oximeters during their two-week quarantine to monitor their blood oxygen levels.

“Widespread pulse oximetry screening for COVID pneumonia — whether people check themselves on home devices or go to clinics or doctors’ offices — could provide an early warning system for the kinds of breathing problems associated with COVID pneumonia,” he wrote.

However, questions remain about the merits of home use of pulse oximeters to measure blood oxygen levels. First, a number of the devices on the market may not be accurate. A 2016 study found only two of six popular oximeters met the criteria for accuracy set by the International Organization for Standardization, an independent, non-governmental international organization dedicated to setting global standards.

In addition, misuse can affect readings. The device must be worn correctly; hands should be at room temperature; and dark nail polish can affect readings, as can holding your breath.

Rutland is encouraging patients he sees via telemedicine to use oximeters to monitor their oxygen levels. He feels the devices, while not perfect, provide doctors with a way to triage regular patients they can’t see in person during isolation.

“As long as someone has a home oximeter and you know the person well enough, you can help them monitor this at home to get a jump start on whether or not they need to go to the hospital,” he said.

“I believe pulse oximetry is incredibly valuable if we were to use it in the window of time that the disease begins to gather strength, which is usually five to 10 days out from when someone is first infected,” Levitan said.

“Then the other thing is to measure inflammatory markers when we observe them in the hospital and use the variety of medicines at our disposal to address inflammation. It’s time to get ahead of this virus instead of chasing it.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/news/doctors-are-shaking-their-heads-at-new-covid-19-symptom-some-patients-are-experiencing/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/doctors-are-shaking-their-heads-at-new-covid-19-symptom-some-patients-are-experiencing/

0 notes

gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years

Text

Her Genetic Test Revealed A Microscopic Problem — And A Jumbo Price Tag

Michelle Kuppersmith, 32, feels great, works full time and exercises three to four times a week. So she was surprised when a routine blood test found that her body was making too many platelets, which help control bleeding. Kuppersmith’s doctor suspected she had a rare blood disorder called essential thrombocythemia, which can lead to blood clots, strokes and, in rare cases, leukemia.

Send Us Your Medical Bill

Do you have an exorbitant or baffling medical bill? Join the KHN and NPR ‘Bill of the Month’ Club and tell us about your experience. We’ll feature a new one each month.

Submit Your Bill

Her doctor suggested a bone marrow biopsy, in which a large needle is used to suck out a sample of the spongy tissue at the center of the patient’s hip bone. Doctors examine the bone marrow under a microscope and analyze the DNA. The procedure allows doctors to judge a patient’s prognosis and select treatment, if needed. Kuppersmith had heard the procedure can be intensely painful, so she put it off for months.

The biopsy — performed by a provider in her insurance network, at a hospital in her network ― lasted only a few minutes, and Kuppersmith received relatively good news. While a genetic analysis of her bone marrow confirmed her doctor’s suspicions, it showed that the only treatment she needs, for now, is a daily, low-dose aspirin. She will check in with her doctor every three to four months to make sure the disease isn’t getting worse.

All in all, Kuppersmith felt relieved.

Then she got a notice saying her insurer refused to pay for the genetic analysis, leaving her responsible for a $2,400 payment.

The Patient: New York resident Michelle Kuppersmith, 32, who is insured by Maryland-based CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield. She works as director of special projects at a Washington-based, nonpartisan watchdog group. Because she was treated in New York, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield — which covers that region ― handled part of her claim.

Total Amount Owed: $2,400 for out-of-network genetic profiling

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Please confirm your email address below:

The Providers: Kuppersmith had her bone marrow removed at the Mount Sinai Ruttenberg Treatment Center in New York City, which sent her biopsy sample to a California lab, Genoptix, for testing.

Medical Services: Bone marrow biopsy and molecular profiling, which involves looking for genetic mutations

What Gives: The field of “molecular diagnostics,” which includes a variety of gene-based testing, is undergoing explosive growth, said Gillian Hooker, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors and vice president of clinical development for Concert Genetics, a health IT company in Nashville, Tennessee.

A Concert Genetics report found there are more than 140,000 molecular diagnostic products on the market, with 10 to 15 added each day.

The field is growing so quickly that even doctors are struggling to develop a common vocabulary, Hooker said.

Kuppersmith underwent a type of testing known as molecular profiling, which looks for DNA biomarkers to predict whether patients will benefit from new, targeted therapies. These mutations aren’t inherited; they develop over the course of a patient’s life, Hooker said.

Medicare spending on molecular diagnostics more than doubled from 2016 to 2018, increasing from $493 million to $1.1 billion, according to Laboratory Economics, a lab industry newsletter.

Charges range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on how many genes are involved — and which billing codes insurers use, Hooker said.

Based on Medicare data, at least 1,500 independent labs perform molecular testing, along with more than 500 hospital-based labs, said Jondavid Klipp, the newsletter’s publisher.

In a fast-evolving field with lots of money at stake, tests that a doctor or lab may regard as state-of-the-art an insurer might view as experimental.

Worse still, many of the commercial labs that perform the novel tests are out-of-network, as was Genoptix.

After lining up an in-network provider at an in-network hospital, Kuppersmith pushed back when she got a $2,400 charge for an out-of-network lab. She appealed and won but says, “There are a lot of people who don’t have the time or wherewithal to do this kind of fighting.”(Shelby Knowles for KHN)

Stephanie Bywater, chief compliance officer at NeoGenomics Laboratories, which owns Genoptix, said that insurance policies governing approval have not kept up with the rapid pace of scientific advances. Kuppersmith’s doctor ordered a test that has been available since 2014 and was updated in 2017, Bywater said.

Although experts agree that molecular diagnostics is an essential part of care for patients like Kuppersmith, doctors and insurance companies may not agree on which specific test is best, said Dr. Gwen Nichols, chief medical officer of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Tests “can be performed a number of different ways by a number of different laboratories who charge different amounts,” Nichols said.

Insurance plans are much more likely to refuse to pay for molecular diagnostics than other lab tests. Laboratory Economics found Medicare contractors denied almost half of all molecular diagnostics claims over the past five years, compared with 5-10% of routine lab tests.

With so many insurance plans, so many new tests and so many new companies, it is difficult for a doctor to know which labs are in a patient’s network and which specific tests are covered, Nichols said.

“Different providers have contracts with different diagnostic companies,” which can affect a patient’s out-of-pocket costs, Nichols said. “It is incredibly complex and really difficult to determine the best, least expensive path.”

Kuppersmith said she has always been careful to check that her doctors accept her insurance. She made sure Mount Sinai was in her insurance network, too. But it never occurred to her that the biopsy would be sent to an outside lab ― or that it would undergo genetic analysis.

She added: “The looming threat of a $2,400 bill has caused me, in many ways, more anxiety than the illness ever has.”

Kuppersmith’s doctor recommended a bone marrow biopsy after suspecting she had a rare blood disorder. Though the biopsy was done by an in-network provider at an in-network hospital, Kuppersmith learned she was on the hook for $2,400 for out-of-network genetic profiling.(Shelby Knowles for KHN)

The Resolution: Despite making dozens of phone calls, Kuppersmith got nothing but confusing and contradictory answers when she tried to sort out the unexpected charge.

An agent for her insurer told her that her doctor hadn’t gotten preauthorization for the testing. But in an email to Kuppersmith, a Genoptix employee told her the insurance company had denied the claim because molecular profiling was viewed as experimental.