john watson background!!!!!
(picture not owned by me, btw)
She hated that fairy that had given her mother the boon of the most beautiful child.
She wished she could be ugly. She wished that when she cried people didn’t whisper about how beautiful she was. She wished that her anger was horrifying. She wished her ill manners were repulsive.
She wished she could be ugly.
She thinks that maybe it’s the bone structure.
Her face was odd, and it was odd in the way that it didn’t seem normal to anyone else. It was something different, and she didn’t like it.
Once, she waxed her eyebrows off entirely. All the way gone. The clock on the bathroom wall showed that it was late, a bit too late to be up. Good. Eye bags would diminish exceptional beauty.
She never got eye bags.
She had panted in front of the mirror, eyes tearing up, but smiling all the same. Finally, she wasn’t perfect. Finally, she felt she could match how pretty she was on the outside with herself on the inside. After so long....
She felt like she was crying happy tears, despite the constant twinges of pain, and it was glorious to feel individuality, as if she could choose what happened! Like she belonged in her body, after trying so long.
And then it grew back in the morning.
Flawlessly shaped and full.
And nothing she ever did changed anything.
God, it was so depressing to think about.
Nothing she did changed anything. Nobody took her seriously, nobody ever looked at her and wanted to see her any less beautiful. The best thing she could be was pretty.
And she didn’t really feel like she matched it, really.
Her body was different from her brain, her face didn’t match her heart - and she didn’t feel like her heart was even that great! She wasn’t super brave or smart or nice or anything, she was just pretty.
She wished she was ugly.
People whispered about her behind her back, and it wasn’t the kind that usually hurt feelings. Normally, nobody would be offended by being called gorgeous or beautiful or hot or cute or whatever adjective English could produce! Normally it would be accepted, craved, even!
But she wanted nothing more than to be wanted for being less than perfect, less than desirable. She was starving for genuine affection, and was getting superficial attention. She didn’t know if unconditional love was real. Isn’t that what a mother should feel?
Does her mother feel that, if she let this thing be her daughter?
It was like a drowning man being showered with money and being told to buy his way out. It would be helpful in any situation other than the one she was in.
Just once, she wished to shave her whole head and wear the ugliest jumper in the history of mankind. Sing like a tone-deaf monkey and break a glass, and have people act horrified and scandalized. She wanted to walk down the street and not hear anything but the cars roll by, and go to a coffee shop without getting five different numbers, maybe enjoy her black coffee for a change.
Anything but perfection.
She wore the loosest hoodies and sweatpants, littered with holes and frayed edges. Her hair was long and smooth. She kept it in a low ponytail, under her hood and away from sight. Nothing she did changed how people saw her. It was like she didn’t matter.
And then she had a brilliant idea; the kind of idea that deserved a light-bulb above her head and sparks behind her eyes. Something new and unexpected, something that could help her be her and not pretty -
A mask.
A mask! What a genius invention, the mask! Something not made to hide beauty, but to disguise an unwelcome face, perhaps. No matter. She wasn’t one to be proper.
She would wear a mask, and maybe people would listen to her words and not her bone structure, or whatever it was that everyone was fascinated with. It could also be her eyelashes or something.
And she got a mask. And went to school.
“Hi,” said her teachers.
“Hi!” said the boys, hoping to get a date.
“Hi!” said the girls, hoping to get a date.
“Hello,” said her friends, who whispered behind her back every time she turned around as if she was deaf.
“Hello!” said everyone passing by her in the hall.
It didn’t change anything.
Dear god, it didn’t change anything-
Nothing she did mattered, did it? She could scream to the high heavens that she’d had enough, and they’d smile and say hello. The holiest demons in Hell had blessed her with ugly beauty, and it was so terribly evil. She wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw her real face. Could she see her real face? Was she being tricked?
She was hiding in the bathroom. Sitting on the floor with her knees curled into her chest and her arms hugging her knees too tight and restricting her lungs so that they screamed louder than the thoughts in her head. It was smelly, and weirdly sticky, but she didn’t care. She was tearing out her hair, or was that even her hair?
The air was being stubborn and hiding from her nose, so she sucked in deep breaths through her mouth, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was so hot in the room but she was so cold, and her throat was so dry and parched that her tongue felt like rubber on sandpaper.
Breathe.
Breathe. Was this even her nose?
Breathe.
It didn’t matter, she didn’t think.
Was this even her brain?
She didn’t care.
She smiled up deliriously at the ceiling. “Hello,” she said, and she knew it sounded like honey in December, but all it felt like was February rain.
It was too cold for her here.
Way too cold........
She wanted to just fall asleep.
...
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world would let her not wake up?
I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.
said softly means you are speaking, but sweetly, and heartfelt. said quietly means it is less sweet, but still not loud or inaudible. whispered means you aren’t speaking at all, and it can have a negative or positive connotation, but more negative than softly. mumbled means it’s nearly inaudible, and has a more negative connotation.
try me, connotations are everything in writing; especially when conveying emotions.
I know I said I wouldn’t make any more sandman edits
but
I need someone to describe the exact feeling this one evokes because words are kind of failing me right now
You’re walking through the woods. It’s so quiet here, so much more quiet than it used to be, and you know it. You’ve never been here before, never seen these trees before, and they look strange, but you can’t exactly place why.
Never has nature been this demented, and you can’t explain the chills running down your spine, cold water streaming down your back and never losing its consistent shock. The colours of the plants are darker here. Still, it’s simultaneously empty and grey. They’ve lost their verdant glows, and you have the sinking feeling that you will lose your own.
It’s both nostalgic and horrifying - you can feel the leaves crunching, and suddenly you are struck by the realization that it’s late spring. The river flows silently, and the leaves and water are the only sounds. You shiver. There are no birds here. They know better than to linger here. They knew better than to dissipate into the wood.
You miss the sunshine, and the familiar feeling of home. There is no light here, but you can still see, and home is so far away, and you don’t know if you can ever return, because this world is all-encompassing and you can’t shake the thought that even if you escape, this place will never truly escape you. You may never get away, you may never tear the shards of this from your mind completely.
Is this home?
You’ve been here so long. So so long. Has it been years now? Minutes or months? How can you measure this with the simplicity of time?
Would it be escape or leaving?
Somebody once said to you that the world is your oyster. What is this world? If you don’t know where you are, what do you make of it? What can you make out of nothing? Something is tugging at the edge of your consciousness. The world is swaying under your feet, dancing to a rhythm you’ve never heard before, and pulling you with it. You can feel the pieces of yourself slipping away, and it could be your vitality. It could be your colours. It could be your awareness. It could be you.
All you know is what is taking away from you.
“Mr. Sandman,” you smile deliriously. You’re so close to being gone.
Finally.
“Dream me a dream?”
You know he is what takes you when you leave.
Prompt #30
(Character A) is a typical teenage protagonist of a high school movie. (Character B) is the typical teenage love interest of the high school movie. Only, there’s a few things in the way of their relationship - their depression, anxiety, problems with authority, and their parents...
All of them teachers at their school.
#prompt#writing idea#creative writing prompts#creative writing ideas#writing#writing prompt#writing prompts#creative writing idea#creative writing prompt#prompts#writing ideas#cliche prompt#au prompt#au prompts#au ideas#au idea#imagine your ship#imagine your otp#otp prompt#otp prompts#ship prompts#ship prompt#otp writing prompt#otp writing prompts
(Character A) always takes care of (Character B)
Me: Nice
(Character A) isn’t used to receiving the affection they usually give and is completely shocked when (Character B) responds the same
Me: NiCE
Prompt #29
Soulmate AU where the last words your soulmate says is written on your skin.
(Character A) doesn’t have any words. (Character B), their soulmate, is immortal.
#immortal#immortality#writing#prompt#prompts#writing prompt#writing prompts#writing idea#writing ideas#creative writing ideas#creative writing idea#creative writing prompt#creative writing prompts#soulmate au#soulmate au prompts#soulmate au prompt#au#imagine your otp#imagine your ship#otp writing prompt#otp writing prompts#the last words your soulmate says is written on your skin
i’m just gonna spend the rest of my summer making myself in these things i swear
anyway anti os should make themselves
veronica-against-onision
These are so cute I can’t
aww uwu
bees-against-onision
Is Picrew becoming Anti-O culture? Because I'm down.
I made me!!!!
Prompt #28
(Character A)’s friend, (Character C), has a HUGE crush on (Character B). In fact, so does (Character A), but they don’t want to start a rivalry with their already possessive friend, so they don’t mention it.
(Character C) comes up with the idea of fake-dating each other in an attempt to make (Character B) jealous, buuuuut....
(Character B) only seems jealous of (Character C).
Prompt #27
(Character A) is a writer lacking inspiration. (Character B) is recently gained the place in the Guinness Book Of Word Records as the most interesting person in the world. They just bumped into each other, literally, in a coffee shop.
???
do i like emo aesthetic? do i like pastel aesthetic? do i like preppy stuff? am i plain?
do i like country? do i like punk? do i like pop? do i like whatever genre(s) twenty one pilots/my chemical romance/fall out boy/panic! at the disco even is?
am i intimidating? am i friendly? am i mean? am i nice?
do i word my sentences right? do i talk calmly enough when i’m in an argument? do my friends really want to be with me as much as i want to be with them? can i talk about my interests without censoring them?
should i talk about my sexuality or preferences? should i talk to my mom about my crush on a girl? should i correct my parents when they only talk about me getting a husband when i’m older? should i tell my extended family that i’m not straight?
can i be open at school? can i raise my hand more than once every five minutes? can i tell my friends about what i really think about? can i be uncloseted at school and not have my flag and explanation of bisexuality on my locker taken down and have it explained to me by the school counselor that it’s because the younger kids could see and ask their parents?
is it okay if i talk louder? is it okay if i don’t apologize all the time? is it okay if i say what i’m thinking? is it okay if i laugh loud and smile wide with my teeth and walk with a wide stride?
is it okay if i ask these questions?
Prompt #26
(Character A) meets (Character B) at the Area 51 raid. (Character B) freaks out because they work there (albeit not voluntarily, it was a family thing to work for the government), and pretends they’re an alien because they’re a pathological liar.
Fortunately(?), (Character A) is stupid and believes them, so now (Character B) has to keep up with the charade after (Character A) takes them home to rescue them from the facility.
#lmao wot#stupid#prompt#prompts#area 51#area 51 prompt#area 51 au#lmao am i actually writing this#writing#writing prompt#writing prompts#writing idea#writing ideas#au#imagine your otp#otp#otp prompt#otp prompts#otp writing prompt#otp writing prompts#stupid prompts#area 51 writing prompts#meme#memes#area 51 memes#binch wtf
Prompt #25
(Character A) and (Character B) are best friends, so of course, when (Character A) goes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, they use a lifeline to call their best friend. They don’t need it, but they just wanted to talk to them before they won.
So, of course, (Character B) accidentally confesses their long-time crush on (Character A) on live television.
... Shit.
hopeless
It goes like this.
A snake meets an angel in a garden of peace and figures that knowledge was more important than that peace. The angel believes they were not destined to be. He gives a sword to the first two humans, and does not fall.
The snake is decidedly not jealous.
He will never be jealous of not falling, because it was what he was always meant to do anyways, wasn’t he?
He was always meant to go down in a blaze of searing flesh and bone and fire, fire, flames that burnt him and swirled around him as he screamed and screamed but it wouldn’t stop, it would never ever stop because all his tears were evaporating and it’s like they never existed and it’s been so long now, is this his new forever? Is this what he is meant to be? Merely an angel for an instant, a plaything to be thrown away for simply asking the wrong questions at the wrong time?
Is this his fault?
(If all the tears he cried wouldn’t have gone up in smoke, maybe they would have been the water to fill the ocean).
It’s fine.
It’s what he was made for, to be tested. The angel wasn’t.
He was fine.
Anyways, he may have gone and fallen in love with said angel.
He was just so wonderful and sweet and genuine, and he was everything the demonic snake would never be. In fact, the demon hadn’t even known that he could love anything until now.
He wasn’t supposed to love anything at all, but here he was, stupidly pining for someone who could never love him.
Hopeless.
—
It goes like this.
Holy water is passed from an angel to a demon, no longer in the form of a snake, and it doesn’t burn the demon. It doesn’t even touch his skin. Not for a second did he even think it would.
They have changed a whole lot since they met, but they have sown trust, and they have sown a bond. A new bond.
Never before has there been a pair of genuine friends that consisted of a demon and an angel, never before has there been a pair that has come close to even fraternization. Not even after the six thousand years they had known each other.
And yet...
He is still going too fast for the angel.
And he doesn’t know how.
“Too fast?!” He throws a plate to the floor, and it shatters. The shards scatter all around the room, and it almost desperately trying to get away from him, hiding under the sofa and under the space between the counters and the floor. His plants are shaking like they never have before, terrified of his unheavenly wrath.
“It’s been so long,” and he sharply pulls on his hair and now he’s crying and tear tracks are running down his face. He doesn’t care. “I’ve waited so long. I’ve tried my best. I’ve-“
He chokes on nothing but his own despair.
He’s kneeling in the shards and they’re digging into his knees. He couldn’t care less.
“What do I need to do?” He was asking someone, anyone, whoever could give him any semblance of an answer, but nobody did. He didn’t know if anyone could.
“How do I be enough? How long do I have to wait until I’m worth more to somebody?” The unknowing of what comes next cut his heart out with a butcher knife made of his own desperation. The only sound to answer his pleas, his prayers, was his own shaky breathing and his plants shuddering.
“Can he even love me?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it? He clenched his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, alone but surrounded by so much noise, a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. He could hear his decorative heart beating, pounding away, like a symbol crashing with crescendo of a whole orchestra his ears.
He was making up noises at this point, wasn’t he? Trying to deafen the silence with his own imagination. As if it could take away everything that there wasn’t. His plants had stopped cowering. They knew the only thing he wanted to yell at right now was himself.
How had God made him this way? Why did he have to exist like this, confused and incapable of accepting the simple fact that he was unlovable? How had he been cursed with a heart that cared about everything?
How had he been cursed to love when he couldn’t be loved himself?
And as he was breaking down for the thousandth time exactly in his lifetime, the angel was fixing himself a cup of tea and humming a simple melody, settling down to read one of his more recently acquired books, completely and utterly unaware of any of it. And he was still alone.
Utterly hopeless.
—
It goes like this.
The Armageddon’t was averted, and the angel and demon have saved the world. Neither of them were expected to, and neither of them were supposed to, but they did. They exist just the same as they did before.
They still drink too much together and dine at the Ritz and talk about dolphins and whales and ducks and live quite normally.
(Well, as normal as you can expect it to get.)
The demon still has yellow snake eyes and listens to Queen almost obsessively and drives too fast, and the angel still loves fancy restaurants and reads old books and barely sells any of them to his customers.
And the demon still loves.
And he still hates that he does.
“I hate caring,” he says one evening, half-way into his third bottle of fine wine. There’s no way he’s sober at this point. He had been drinking since he had arrived at Aziraphale’s bookshop, despite Aziraphale himself declining to partake in it. “I just hate it so much.”
“I know, dear,” Aziraphale raises an eyebrow and turns a page of the book he’s reading. Crowley’s pretty sure it’s one of Jane Austen’s earlier novels. “You’ve told me many times.”
“I know, I know, I know,” Crowley waves him off, but just a bit too enthusiastically, and leans forward on his knees. “But I just hate it. Too much.”
“Too much what?” He asks. He turns the page, but is almost certainly not reading it. He seems more focused on the conversation now.
“There’s too much. I feel too much. Not s’posed to.” Crowley pulls a disgusted look. “Demons ‘r not s’posed to love ‘n stuff.”
Aziraphale frowns and it looks almost like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle in his head. “You can love?”
Crowley chokes like he did so long ago, and there’s something trapped in the back of his throat, a lump that’s suffocating him, and he almost hopes that he could really die instead of just discorporate.
“I-“ he swallows deep, “I wish I couldn’t. God- Satan- Somebody,” he doesn’t know who somebody even is.
“I wish I couldn’t, so bad. So bad.” He wishes he weren’t so drunk, too, but he doesn’t want to sober up, and the love thing precedes the drunkenness by a large portion.
“Why would you not want to be able to love?” Aziraphale questions, a concerned look in his eyes. “Why would you ever want that? That would be horrible!”
“No it wouldn’t.” Crowley is completely serious, and it’s clear that Aziraphale doesn’t understand at all.
“How could not loving ever be a good thing?!”
“How could it ever be a good thing?”
Aziraphale pinches his nose and sighs. “I’m really arguing with a drunk Crowley right now,” he mutters under his breath. “Sober up.”
“But-“ Crowley whines, and Aziraphale shushes him with a finger. He huffs. “‘Kay...”
He sobers up in less than a minute, and opens his eyes to see Aziraphale with his arms crossed in front of him.
“Explain your argument.” He asks politely, and Crowley is so ready to destroy him with his debate skills.
“I love a lot, unfortunately, and people can’t love me.” He lays it plainly out in front of them, and can’t understand for the life of him why Aziraphale looks so pained.
“... Are you okay?” asks Crowley, and is completely surprised and overtaken by Aziraphale squeezing the living daylights out of him. He makes a noise that is not a squeak (it totally is, but he will never admit it) as his rib cage is practically ground to dust.
“What-“ he lets out a breath as Aziraphale hugs him closer. “What’s this for and also I can’t breathe please let me go what are you doing-“
“I’m hugging you,” says Aziraphale simply, and only lets Crowley have a bit of breathing room.
“But why?” Crowley asks with a furrowed brow.
“Because you need one, clearly,” and that’s the explanation he gives.
Crowley is still not following. “Why would I need a hug?”
“You can be loved,” and Crowley’s lungs are screaming for another reason as all his air is stolen, along with his words.
“You can be loved so much, Crowley, you can be loved, you can be loved, I love you and you don’t even know how much, I promise you I’ll never hide it ever again, I promise, you go so fast but I think I’ve caught up, Crowley, oh dear...” There’s tears dripping and soaking his shirt, but he doesn’t care, because he’s ruining Aziraphale’s coat too.
“I-“ How does one say that they have loved another for thousands of years? Since the garden of Eden? Since they knew each other?
“I love you so much I can’t think anymore,” is what he goes with. “I just never thought that anyone could love a demon.”
The angel, his angel, was still holding him in his arms. “I’m not sure if being a demon suits you, darling. I think you may be the only exception.”
And so they live as exceptions.
Mutual exceptions, a demon who didn’t quite suit being a demon or an angel, and an angel who didn’t quite suit being an angel or a demon.
In the end, they were quite human.
And they were quite happy with that.
Maybe they weren’t quite hopeless.
as it should be
“Yellow is fake,” says Lilac to Oleander. “It is because I say so.”
Lilac tilts their head and keeps staring at the setting sun, squinting to see the colours. Oranges and yellows blended together and draped around the clouds like the most perfect curtains to ever exist, natural and ugly.
Fake.
“And all of the clouds must be paintings.” Oleander has never understood Lilac. Maybe they never would.
“What do you mean?” Lilac traces the sky with a gentle, steady hand, the clouds just barely shifting and twisting, gliding instead of pulling like a current in a river. Impossible, incomprehensible.
“Why are black and white not colors, but yellow is?” Lilac questions. Lilac has an awful lot of questions. They’ve always been curious. Not so much that they never look before they leap, but just enough to look over the edge and decide it isn’t that far of a drop.
That doesn’t mean that they would be right, however.
Oleander has always been the kind of person to never leap in the first place, let alone look. The varying perspectives is exciting the main diffference between the two.
Oleander responds, “Because black and white aren’t part of the rainbow.”
Lilac furrows their brow. “But we’re just humans. If we were mantis shrimp, and we had sixteen color receptors, then maybe black and white would be colors in the rainbow.”
Lilac gestures at all the fake colour. It dances around in streaks, brush strokes painting lines stolen right off the rainbow. “Why are we allowed to judge that if we can’t know for sure? Why can’t I declare that yellow is fake, like black and white?”
“Because we want labels.” Oleander is becoming annoyed. “We want labels, because we want to have purpose and meaning. We want to be defined. Purpose is having a place, a contribution to something. That gives us purpose, or whatever we think is purpose anyways.
“We all want purpose, because without it we don’t have meaning.”
“But why can’t we have no labels and still have meaning and purpose?” Lilac runs a hand through their hair, squeezing their eyes shut and staring at the yellows in the backs of their eyelids instead. Comforting fireworks of golden sparks, raining down in waves. An ocean of fiery yellow. It’s fake. “Labels don’t indicate worth. Labels aren’t a purpose. They’re a box. People can’t fit in boxes. I mean, I haven’t ever tried, but I don’t think the shapes would match up.”
Oleander may never understand Lilac, but they will always listen, in case one day, they find an answer in the horde of never-ending questions. In case one day, Oleander figures out why Lilac keeps them up all night when they’re not even there.
In case one day, Oleander won’t have to strike through their thoughts anymore.
“Because boxes are comforting. They’re a safe place. A shelter. And people aren’t always comfortable in their own selves, so sometimes they’ll put themselves in shelters. They’ll make a home in a label because they can’t find one in their own mind.” The words are spilling out of their mouth, clumps and pieces jumbling together. “They don’t feel comfortable with who they are, so they try to make themselves someone they like because they think that they’ll be comfortable with someone else. With a cliché.”
The words stop flowing. They drift off instead, and Oleander tries to catch them, tries to fit them in their fists. It barely works. They only snatch a single sentence. “But they never are.”
It’s a grey sentence, Oleander knows. Shiny silvery grey, colourless. It’s a truthful group of words, honest. Nothing is really black and white. Black and white sentences aren’t lies, really, but they’re always mistaken.
Grey is the only honest colour.
Oleander wonders what the least honest colour is. They think that maybe, just maybe, it might be yellow.
Lilac thinks that Oleander is right. Lilac also thinks that when they look up and open their eyes, all they can see looks like paint on the water, and their focus shifts once more.
“Crystal clear water,” they murmur. “And acrylic.”
Oleander is not following. “What?”
“The clouds,” Lilac explains. They’ve got a sleepy look on their face, and eyes like stars. “I’ve decided they’re paint on water. They can’t be real.”
Oleander wishes they could be Lilac, and see the world as simple as they do.
Just for a second.
A single, sweet second of understanding.
Oleander think about the comparisons of the both of them frequently. It’s glaringly obvious that they contrast each other greatly. One might even say that they complimented each other well.
Lilac smiles slow, small, and sweet, and Oleander doesn’t smile much at all anymore. Lilac is fantastical and creative. Oleander doesn’t even like anything other than non-fiction. Lilac always has an idea. Oleander can’t remember the last time they thought of something new, original.
Oleander wants to contribute to something. Maybe Oleander needs meaning as well.
“Maybe oil pastels on acrylic,” Oleander offers.
Lilac stretches their arms out on the grass below them, digging their fingers in the warm dirt and getting it under their nails. Wet earth stains their hands, but they don’t care. “On a canvas,” they add quietly.
Lilac feels like they could just melt into the ground, close their eyes again without looking once at the explosions of fake colours, and just fall.
Fall intangible through the core of the world, and through the other side.
Maybe even fall through China instead of digging their way there.
Fall into the sky.
Fall asleep.
And they do.
Oleander goes on to stare at the moon. And the clouds go on to being oil pastels on acrylic, and yellow goes on being fake.
Everything is wrong.
As it should be.
Just in case newer followers would like to read this :)
He doesn’t know what to make of it.
It’s ugly and it’s not, it’s beautiful and it’s not, it’s simultaneously everything he could have wanted and everything he dreaded.
She was leaving him.
She was leaving him, and wasn’t that fantastic? Wasn’t that horrible? Wasn’t that everything he could think of, alone but together with himself and a bottle that he could’ve sworn had fused to the callouses on his fingertips, had been superglued there and never ever left.
She was leaving him.
He still had his wedding ring, stuck to his finger in a different way than when you try on a ring and have to take it off with soap and water and time. It was stuck by the adhesive of his own mind. Trapped. He couldn’t take it off, couldn’t bare to pry it away.
She had taken hers off long ago, so why was his still stuck, like the bottle to his callouses and to his lips and permanent streams of saltwater that clung to his cheeks for days and days and days? Why?
All of his breaths were shudders and all of his thoughts were endless strings that never had a conclusion, an essay with an infinite word-count. He could still see the amber spilt on the floor through watery eyes, and still found it ironic that he was back to crying over spilt milk and spilt Jack Daniels and spilt tears and he was crying over everything and nothing and whatever was in between, so why did it matter anyways?
He clenched the bottle even tighter in his hand, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was alcohol and how much of it was his own tears at this point, and he knew he had to stop.
He had always known he needed to stop. He knew he needed to stop the first time he took a secret sip from beer in the fridge and the first time he had a serious hangover and the first time and the first time he met her and the first time she left him and the first time she came back and the first time she left a second time.
So many firsts. To him, the milestones didn’t matter a single bit. To him, all that mattered was that he didn’t have to care about what really did matter. And he was incredibly proficient at that in particular.
So he was good at knowing when to quit, but he was never quite as good at quitting. He was still stuck on that one time she smiled at him and she had looked so genuine, so real, and how she had looked just as real and tired when she said that she wanted a divorce and that she had had another.
She had another, didn’t she? Of course she did, she was always good at back-up plans and back-up-back-up plans. He knew it when she had a beer spilt on her shirt that neither of them liked (like the Jack Daniels on the floor and the milk knocked over to the ground and his heart to hell fires). He knew it when she came home with her lipstick smeared and with her eyes wild, he knew it when she stopped looking him in the eye and started looking at the wall behind him.
(The last time she looked him in the eye she told him straight to his face that she had another.)
(The last time he looked her in the eye he didn’t say a word.)
He stood up and slipped on the whiskey and prayed to whoever was out there that he wouldn’t be able to get up. It didn’t work.
It never worked, did it? Whoever was out there doesn’t care much for people like him anyway, and he could hear in the back of his head the whisper screams of ‘alcoholic’ and ‘acute mania’ his own screams weren’t loud enough. The shards of the bottles scattering everywhere when he smashed them to drown them out hid under his couch and beneath the coffee table to escape him and he understood why, because he was running from himself too, like her.
He didn’t know if there was a God anywhere.
Prompt #23
(Character A) is a witch, and (Character B) promised their firstborn to them. (Character A) was joking, but (Character B), who didn’t really want kids anyways, took it completely seriously. They soon became actual friends, but then (Character B) accidentally has a kid.
Now, they have to deal with the child, and the custody issues, as (Character B) decided that they now want to be in their kid’s life.
Prompt #21
AU where when two people fall in love with each other, they are stuck together forever and can’t fall in love with anyone else after.
(Character A) fell in love with (Character C) a long time ago, but (Character C) was only pretending to love them. Unaware of this, (Character A) ends up breaking up with them after finding (Character C) cheating.
Heartbroken and lonely, (Character A) runs to their best friend, (Character B), who, unbeknownst to (Character A), is in love with them.
As (Character A) recovers, they begin to fall for (Character B), but is in denial, as they believe they already had their love. (Character B) is in denial for the same reason, but soon start to suspect something is up after (Character C) claims to have found their TRUE love.
Prompt #20
The world is run by the intelligent, and the dumb are considered as lesser humans.
(Character A) is one of the most elite, knowledgeable people, and holds a high ranking. Contrastingly, (Character B) isn’t smart, and is looked at as scum.
However, both of them find each other through the internet, and as they talk more and more, they realize that the system may be rigged.
words suck
What are words?
What could she say?
Everything she wanted to say was stuck in her throat, all the ‘I care about you’s and the ‘I’m not mad at you, I just care about you so much that I can’t bear it when you don’t care about yourself’ and all the ‘I don’t know’s.
Because really, she didn’t know.
She didn’t know a lot of things.
She didn’t know what to say to the self-deprecating comments on the side or the casual mentions of not eating as much and being to unhealthy or the anything.
Did she talk about it seriously? Did she sit him down and tell him that he was perfectly fine just the way he is? No. That would make him uncomfortable.
Did she just dismiss or negate the self-deprecating comments and hope he took it seriously? Maybe, but there’s a chance it won’t work.
What are words?
Her parents had always told her that she took things too seriously. In truth, she just didn’t see the point in things not taken or said literally. What was the point in saying something if it isn’t true and you can’t help anyone by saying it?
Sometimes, she wished everyone else took things as seriously as she did. If they did, she wouldn’t have to worry about miscommunication and honesty.
If they did, maybe they’d listen to her.
She had so much to say, but finding a strategy to say it and coming across in the right way so they would pay attention was stressful.
She really wished she could find a way to talk to him in the right way.
What are words?
Taken literally, words are a form of communication, verbal and nonverbal. Words come in many languages and interpretations, so there’s a million ways to say anything that comes to mind.
Words are also a way to shape and share thoughts, going above and beyond the basic need for survival most animals prioritize.
But, as humans are the apex predators, they have a lot of freedom to just think.
And think they do.
What is the meaning of everything? Is there a purpose to life? Is there a reason we’re here? Should we even be here?
Should I even be here?
Why?
And she doesn’t have an answer. She doesn’t know what to say. She never does.
She’s been given a thousand answers to her million questions, and although that’s a lot of answers, it’s not enough in the context.
Will she ever know enough?
Will she ever have enough?
…
Will she ever be enough?
And she doesn’t know.
So she keeps asking questions and hoping for a single answer per every hundred or thousand, and hopes she’ll be enough to help him.
Hopes she’ll be enough to help anybody.
Maybe everyone else sees that she helps one person, and that she must be good at it, and they don’t see the dozen before that she couldn’t help.
Is it enough?
...
Words suck.