The War Has Returned Again, Gaza Is Under Bombardment And My Area Is Being Subjected To Heavy Shelling.

death with no dignity; patrick zweig

“ amethyst and flowers on the table

is it real or a fable ?

well, i suppose, a friend is a friend

and we all know how this will end ” - sufjan stevens

cw (18+) : mentions of depressive symptoms, masturbation, and heavy yearning.

wc : 1.9 k

When Patrick was eighteen, he killed a doe. 

It was an accident, it truly was, in every sense of the word. 

He had been driving home from Art’s house around 11 PM and had been playing some stupid song on the radio. He’d thrashed his head and slapped his palms against the leather steering wheel to the stupid beat, carefree and unassuming. It had been so dark, and he was distracted, and then suddenly the deer was in the center of the road. Big, black, shiny eyes and pointed ears and a deep brown coat. She was beautiful. For the split moment that he had before the impact, that’s all he could think about. 

He didn’t have enough time to swerve and avoid her because he’d been speeding, and everything afterwards happened in slow-motion. The skidding squeal of his tires against the asphalt. His heart lurching in his ribcage, almost enough to make him feel sick. The harsh jolt of the car and the brutal sound of metal hitting muscle, followed by the animal being sent hurtling a few feet forward and onto her side, accompanied by the painful sting of the seatbelt digging into his chest. When the car finally came to a stop, Patrick froze. His hands stuck to the wheel, shaking, and his eyes were peeled open wide as he stared through the windshield at the lifeless creature he’d just hit with his car. He was practically panting. He didn’t quite recall ever being so scared in his entire life, not even when he’d played his first professional match. Not even when he’d nearly drowned one summer years ago when he and Art were swimming in a lake upstate. 

He’d never killed anything before. Not like that. 

The aftermath was a blur. He almost called the cops to let them know that there was a large, dead animal in the road on so-and-so street, but he didn’t. To this day, he doesn’t really know why. Maybe it was all of the adrenaline. Maybe it was all of the guilt. Regardless, he’d mumbled a soft, “Oh, god, I’m sorry,” and then slowly pulled off and around it. He never told his parents, or anyone for that matter, that he had cried so hard on the rest of the drive home that he felt lightheaded by the time he was in the driveway. 

Mommy and Daddy Zweig offered–no, begged–to get him a new car the next evening (when they got back from Greece) because his hood and bumper were horribly dented, but Patrick had refused. He’d laughed off the incident in front of them, and then waited until they went to bed to slink into their massive garage and pick all of the little tufts of fur out of the vehicle’s grille.

He’d traced his fingertips along the indentations and the scratches in the paint and blinked away the wetness clouding his vision. Tried to mentally retrace his steps that night, too. What if he hadn’t been listening to that stupid song? What if he hadn’t left his best friend’s place so late? What if he’d been quicker? Smarter? Luckier? 

Could things be different? Could he have spared a life? 

Could he have spared the victim, and himself, the pain?

Patrick’s twenty-one now, and he does a lot of retracing his steps these days.

Tennis is his priority; he’s always on the court, or in a car or a bus that’s traveling to a court of some kind. Forehands, backhands, volleying, serving, smashes–it’s all he lives and breathes. And, of course, it’s easier now to focus on tennis when he no longer has friends. 

Art and him haven't talked in many months (has it really been years?), not since Tashi’s knee had gotten injured during that match at Stanford. 

Fuck that fucking match. And fuck them. 

He didn’t need them, he was doing just fine on his own. 

If his best friend of over a decade wanted to kick him to the curb like he was nothing more than a dog that had bitten him a smidge-too-hard to be loved, then whatever. If his grotesquely-talented girlfriend wanted to break up with him because he didn’t want to be treated like a lesser athlete nor sit in her shadow, then fine. He’d enjoy his tennis career and roll freely in the expendable income he was sure to continue collecting.

But that’s not really who Patrick is. 

And so he can’t help but lie awake at night, trying to pin-point where things went wrong–what he could have done to prevent this outcome–and tracing the indentations and scratches in his relationships that surely were only indicative of his faults. Compulsively picking at the tufts nestled in the wreckage. Eyeing the bloody brutalization, punishing himself by reliving the sting.

Sometimes he drags his fingertips over some of his old, banged-up rackets that he can't bear to get rid of, and he thinks about all of it. Tennis academy days with the shy, funny blonde kid that he became close with from day one. Learning and teaching and discussing with him all of the typical adolescent lessons that gave way to life outside of the bubble. Doubles matches–so many doubles matches. So many wins. First beers, first girlfriends, first cigarettes, first kisses. They shared everything with one another and they (almost neurotically) timed their experiences to happen around the same time so that they'd be able to talk to each other about them afterwards. As they got a bit older though, Patrick began to realize that he was feeling things for Art that he probably wasn’t supposed to tell him about. And he usually told Art everything.

That was his first mistake, he thinks, like when he hadn’t heeded the speed limit that night. Or, maybe, that was like playing the stupid song on the radio and going home late. It was the start of their untimely end. 

When he’s in one of his usual depressive spirals, the kind in which he can’t seem to find his appetite and he forgets to shower and he ignores his manager’s texts, he argues with himself about what exactly could be considered the “impact”. Was it when he had cheekily served like Art during that one casual training session, ball to the neck of the racket, confirming that he had slept with Tashi and thus beginning the festering of that awful jealousy in his friend? Or was it when he praised her in front of Art before her match in the singles tournament that fateful afternoon, igniting his friend's interest? Patrick remembers the look that glossed over Art’s eyes when he first caught sight of her; he had looked at her and suddenly Patrick felt like he’d been forgotten–like he’d melted into those bleachers and disappeared. He can’t really blame him, Tashi was talented and beautiful and ambitious and confident and mature–she was everything that Art steadfastly admired in a person. She was twice the person that Patrick had been back then.

Usually though, he comes to the painful conclusion that the impact was certainly the day of the Stanford match. More specifically, it was when Art had yelled at him for the first time in the entirety of their friendship. 

“Patrick, get the fuck out!” 

Those four words ring through his head on the worst of days.

He knew he’d fucked up by not pushing aside his pride and going to support Tashi after their fight, so he could pretty easily swallow down the discomfort that came with being yelled at by her. They yelled at each other pretty often when they got into their little spats, it was relatively normal. But god.. It was so much different when it was him. Patrick's muscles had locked up; he was shaking and breathing hard like he’d just run a marathon, able to see nothing but that pair of angry, familiar eyes. The vitriol that came spurting from the blonde’s mouth was like the worst toxin he’d ever known. It paralyzed him and began to rot his insides from that very moment on. And then all of the suffocating memories came flooding back as he turned and walked out of that campus health center. 

Giggling under blankets with a flashlight, reading comics until the sun started to come up. Practicing for hours on the courts at the academy, sometimes until they both got sunburns and heatstroke. Sleeping in the same bed on summer nights at Patrick’s house–tiredly watching the way Art’s chest rose and fell with each of his breaths and trying not to look at his lips. Holding each other when Art’s parents got divorced and he cried so hard that he got a nosebleed. Bandaging each other’s blisters. Wearing each other’s clothes. Having each other's back.

He doesn’t understand what he did to truly deserve being treated like that in the end by Art.

He’d been a good decent friend, hadn’t he? 

How could Art’s infatuation with her be enough to snuff out everything that they built together? It was supposed to be the two of them for the rest of their lives. Sure, they could each get married, pursue a career, have kids, but at the end of the day it was always meant to be them, wasn't it? Fire and Ice? Did he get that part wrong?

He habitually questions how much he really meant to him.

When Patrick does muster up the strength to drag himself to the shower, he generally stays in there for at least an hour. “Waste of water” be damned. He closes his eyes and lets the warmth run over his hair and his naked body. He presses his back to the cold shower wall and rubs his eyes until he sees white flashes dancing in the darkness. It’s not uncommon for his mind to wander back to you-know-who. In fact, that’s who’s usually on his mind whenever he’s not trying harder to forget. And it’s easy for Patrick to fixate on those blurry white flashes and suddenly see yellow curls, bright blue irises, deep smile lines, flushed cheeks. Breath smelling of that peppermint gum he always chewed. The sound of his nervous laughter and joyous cheers. Patrick would know him even if all of his senses were somehow dulled or taken from him. He would know Art by the feel of his soul breathing life into his own. He would know him, surely.

And maybe it’s an act of pure filth and desperation, or one of flesh-tearing grief, but many times Patrick winds up touching himself. Slow, steady, tender–the way he assumes Art touches Tashi. The way he had always wanted to touch Art, though he never even gathered the courage to try to hold his hand. He thumbs his weeping slit and keens as he feels the sadness and arousal roiling in his gut. He chokes on little moans that sound like sobs that sound like screams. He’s starved. How is it possible to miss someone when they’re everywhere? He thinks it’s funny that he’s forgotten what Art’s speaking voice sounds like but also refuses to watch any of his latest interviews on TV. He doesn’t want to see if there’s a ring on his finger, and he certainly doesn’t want to think about all of the ways Tashi gets to keep him as her own. He was mine, he unfairly thinks as he strokes himself under the scalding water, he was mine and I loved him and you lured him in and then he was gone.

The orgasm usually comes quick, spurred on by the near-lethal dose of petulant thought. He feels his thighs tremble and then his hand starts to lose its rhythm and then he’s crying out as he comes hard over his curled fingers. Sticky, clotted, putrid evidence of his lack of control. When he finally opens his eyes again, salt spills down his ruddy skin from wet lashes. He gets dizzy from the heat and the steam, he feels like he’s choking on all of it. He brings his dirtied hand under the showerhead and watches as his mess is rinsed away, down the drain in a gurgling spiral. It takes everything in him not to collapse.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” he whispers, before he forces himself out of the bathroom and collapses in a wet heap over his bed. His skin sticks to the sheets and makes him feel like some sort of dirty, beastly thing that crawls out of swamps and swallows up all of the good it can touch. He figures that the feeling is not far off from the truth.

When Patrick was eighteen, he killed a doe. 

And that doe followed him for the rest of his life.

note : to anyone who's ever had a childhood crush on their best friend. to anyone struggling with the grief.

This was intentionally written to be a bit "all over the place"; I wanted to show how scattered Patrick's thoughts can be. Also I love, love, love Tashi, I just think Patrick maybe sometimes (early on, before he helped her cheat) blamed her for his and Art's split for unjust reasons.

tags : @venusaurusrexx @tashism @grimsonandclover @diyasgarden @weirdfishesthoughts @gibsongirrl @newrochellechallenger2019 @jordiemeow @artstennisracket @cha11engers ♡

Pink in the Night

an: in honor of @blastzachilles birthday (i love you), @glassmermaids comeback (i missed you), and international women's day (go us). it's short but hopefully sweet because i love her so

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The rain hitting the roof above your head is taunting. A million little taunts. Each sound of watery, dull impact is a reminder that your skin is crawling to the point it may very well come off. No amount of tossing and turning, pressure to a new spot on your body, is undoing that nauseating tingly sensation. Stupid. You were, are, so, so incredibly stupid. 

She’s still here, sitting at your desk, like she hopes to forget by surrounding herself in familiarity. Your room was safe. Your room was a place of shared secrets and shoulders to cry on. Your room wasn’t the party you’d just left in some frat house. You hadn’t kissed her here. You don’t understand why she had come, much less why she still hadn’t left. A place she spends her nights where she can’t sleep, a welcome distraction from her exhaustion. Those night visits have grown quite frequent. She didn’t have to be here to watch you wallow. She knows that better than anyone. She’s above letting other people’s problems become her own. 

You told her you were drunk, which is probably why she’d still insisted on walking you home after everything. Her hair was damp to prove it, the hood of her sweatshirt still warming your cheeks. Still sweet to you. Just to you. Why you? Because you weren’t drunk. You had never been so clear-headed in all your life. It was still stupid, a moment of false confidence aided by flashing blue lights and glittery eyeshadow on honey brown skin. It wasn’t the grandiose gesture she deserved. It wasn’t a bouquet of white lilies, her flower of choice, it wasn’t candlelit dinner at the fancy steak place she wants to try, but you can’t afford, it wasn’t the carefully crafted note that’s folded into the drawer of the very desk she now sits at. It’s been sitting there for months, waiting for its turn under her eyes, the way most things do. Everyone waits to be beheld by Tashi, because it feels like being looked at by something divine. Even when scrutinizing, or cruel, there’s an otherworldliness to her. And here she is, a goddess watching her fake drunk friend roll around like a petulant child. A goddess who has to pick up her sweatshirt off of old, dorm room carpet when her hoodie is thrown there.

You lift your head just off your pillow, enough to strain your neck, enough to meet her eyes should she choose to reward you with such a thing. She runs her tongue over her bottom lip for a moment, sticky with gloss she hadn’t put there. Cherry-flavored gloss that she knows you gave her. She smiles, lifts her fingers to her lips to feel it. She wants to seal it to her skin. 

And even if she’s smiling, looking at you as she does so, you’re mortified. You’re never going to forget how she’d looked at you, pushing on your chest to recreate the space that you’d so unjustly taken from between your two bodies. She looked shocked, she looked horrified. Scariest of all, she looked disappointed. She’d never looked at you that way. And she was disappointed, yes, because she hadn’t expected it. Because she hadn’t made the move she was convinced she’d get the shot at. Because she hadn’t touched you when she got the chance. You tasted like cherry lip gloss and the Sprite you’d just tasted. You tasted like a diner Shirley Temple, how cliche. And you smelled like lavender and warm nights in and sex and soft skin and she didn’t even let it happen.

Her eyes shine against the glow of lampposts and the moon, aligned with it just so she shines like the light of it came from within her. Aligned with the celestial, aligned with the feminine, glittering and soft and sharp and witty. Sweet words, taut muscles, long, elegant frame. You admired her body not with hunger, necessarily, but with desire. And there’s a difference, not necessarily in intent, but the way it feels. Because each time she turns her head and more of her collarbone becomes visible, the dip of it shallow, the appearance of thin lines of muscle in her neck, is just another thing to worship. Another place to kiss. Another spot to let her know is well loved. Appreciated. Doing a wonderful job in keeping her whole. You love each and every part of herself she’d given you the honor of seeing. The secrets that you held tenderly in your palms, the insecurities you’d whisper praises into her skin to undo, the memories of smaller things in a world that seemed much bigger, missing teeth, frizzy hair, and you will sing a requiem to her past self. You love her, you love her, you love her. 

She’s still kneeling on that awful, scratchy carpet, the fabric of her poor sweatshirt in hand, and would hate yourself for making tonight one you regret entirely. You’d kissed her once already, just an hour ago, and she can already know what to expect. But you did it wrong. You did it without any of the soft hands, honeyed praise, fluttering lashes, and absolutely palpable adoration that she deserves. Not deserves, requires. It’s an unwritten rule, but one everyone knows is there. She allows you that second chance, long fingers to tear tracked cheeks, yours ghosting over every part you can reach. The position is uncomfortable, awkward, but you can manage. You will take any amount of pain the world can throw at you if you can bask in her presence as a result. You will continue to try and undo the nonexistent damage you’d done, again and again and again. Even when she’s no longer kissing you back, just giggling at the sensation of warm, soft affection to heated skin, you will continue to try. The rain is rhythmically tapping against the roof with each beat of your heart, each inhale and exhale, each touch of her body to yours. She doesn’t leave that night, and you get to watch her, bare-faced and clad in just undergarments, as she lays in your bed. She sleeps easily, peacefully, close but not atop you. She loves you, she loves you, she loves you, and that victory tastes like cherry lip gloss.

this sucks but i haven't written in a while so. here you go

Everyone was horrified by your lack of tears. You could see it on their faces. You were supposed to keel over with your knees pressing into your stomach and wail, pounding on the floor like the vibrations would shake through his body and start up his heart again. If that was going to work, he would’ve come back days ago. The night you got the call, you wished you’d been more shocked. You hung up the phone politely, always cordial with his mother despite everything, and screamed. Screamed like the release was enough. Enough to feel better? Enough to wake him up? Who knows. Certainly not you. Now, you don’t cry. You hardly move. Where was there to go when pinned down by a loss this big? Not to sleep. Not to the awakened world that reality brings, either. Not to the middle ground. It’d be easier to snap your fingers and just phase out of existence. You wonder how it’d feel to be sucked into a black hole. You wouldn’t necessarily mind if it hurt.

You didn’t want to see the body. The worst thing you possibly could do for yourself would be to see the body. When you first heard, you tried to imagine what he’d look like, all paper white and green like the veins beneath his wrists. You had a hard time picturing it, initially, because how could you? He had been livelier than people gave him credit for. He lit up during movie nights, grinned like the sun had shone down just for him when he got the curve of your nose in a drawing just right. He’d been so alive. Soon it got easier. You could wipe off the cheap foundation holding him together just enough to look lifelike while lifeless and see if your imagination was correct, but it’d do you no good. It still hurt to see him all colorful, rosy like the blood beneath his skin still flowed. He looked the same. It feels like he’d been dead this whole time. You fear he had been.

The dirt in the ground beneath you had hardened with the cold air, bunching in on itself to create an uncomfortable, constant press against your spine. You tossed, turned, and the earth didn’t move. Nothing had ever bent at your will, really. You weren’t one of the lucky ones. You learned about this once, how cold slows down particle movement, hardens things, molds them into one set form. The smell of misty, post-rain air was still dancing around, the remnants now shining, silvery coatings over the deep green blades of grass which tickled the skin of your cheek. 

If you reached out your hand just enough, it would touch his, and it would still feel like lighting on fire from the inside out. The cigarette between his lips, which bobbed when he swallowed around nothing, sizzled a bit on the inhale, glowing redder with each breath in, and simmering down when the connection was lost. You think you understand how it feels. You could’ve kissed him if you wanted to, but you’d never liked the way that cigarette smoke lingers on your tongue, wraps around your hair like ivy and burrows itself between the fibers of your clothes. So you just watched as he breathed life into it, cherry glowing brighter, brighter still, a flaming, striking orange, then reducing down to a deeper red. 

If it weren’t so cold, maybe the stars would;ve seem less hazy. The world always seems muddled this time of year, all soft lines and blending colors, like each texture was bleeding into the other. Then again, maybe it was just your eyes. But still, they glowed for you, for him, maybe for the pair you made up. 

“Do you think that you’ll ever be okay knowing this is it?”

He had a way of speaking that makes everything sound significant, like a weight off his chest comes with each syllable that funneled up from his throat. It’s one of those things you love about him, one of many. Sure, he’d had his flaws, like all people do, but when he made something as simple as a greeting sound like a poem, it’s almost indescribable, the sensation of hearing him say that he loves you. 

“I think that’s fine with me. It’s not like things are stuck here. I can still move around a little bit. You know, make friends, get a job. Things that aren’t concrete.” 

He hums, tilting his head up as if he’s going to nod, but he never drops it back down. He just keeps staring up, up and away. Almost like something is looking back at him. You hope whatever God is holding his gaze is one of the pleasant ones, all white, flowing dresses and feathered wings. 

“Do you think you’ll be ok with it?”

He shrugged, took a breath. 

“It’ll have to be enough.”

You itch with disgust at the memory. The stupidity you’d always had. It’d never be enough. Maybe ‘it’ wasn’t anything you could ever understand. He’d been the smarter one. You step outside of the funeral parlor, hands shaking as they dig through your purse, pulling out a small box of cigarettes you haven’t yet learned to stop coughing around. You hope the smoke which fills your lungs doesn’t leave, settling into a hard soot against you. You settle it between your lips, the lighter setting it aglow. You breathe in, choke at the harshness, and suck in harder. It better stick into each and every hair. It better turn your teeth yellow with damage. It’s like kissing him all over again.

gripping onto my vintage ghostface figurine and giggling with glee

LOVE ME TO DEATH .ᐟ

part one ・ part two

summary: After surviving the Stanford massacre, you try to start over—move away, change your name. But Art, Patrick and Tashi were never caught. Strange messages and disappearances begin again, and the paranoia you thought you’d buried resurfaces. You’re not sure if you are being hunted… or if they’re luring you back in to finish what they started.

cw: 1.5k words. apt!scream au. paranoia and stalking. psychological trauma. gaslighting. violence (implied). threatening messages. fear and dread. obsession. loss of control.

genre: psychological horror / slasher / thriller.

taglist .ᐟ @blastzachilles, @lvve-talks, @jordiemeow, @strfallz, @222col, @soulxinxthexsky, @diyasgarden, @jinxedbambi, @lexiiscorect, @religionlost, @bluestrd, @jclolz22, @magicalmiserybore, @destinedtobegigi, @fwaist, @idyllicdaydreams, @sohighitscool, @shahabaqsa0310

You don’t dream about the knife anymore. You dream about the silence that came after it. The moment you realized no one was coming. The moment their hands let go of your throat—not because they took mercy, but because they wanted you to live.

You were their final girl. And you didn’t ask for that.

After the attack, the cops found your dorm soaked in blood—whose? You never knew. Your screams woke up the entire west quad after escaping the athletic building lockers. You gave them names—Tashi Duncan, Patrick Zweig, Art Donaldson—and you gave them details. You told them where the rest of the bodies were buried; little secrets the killers had told you before letting you go. Which drawers held the Ghostface masks. What the blood under your fingernails meant.

But they were already gone. No phones. No footage. No fingerprints. Like the whole thing had been a story you made up during a psychotic break.

But you know the truth. They let you live. And monsters don’t vanish forever.

You moved across the country six months later.

New name. New school. No tennis courts. No whispers of Ghostface. You enrolled in a tiny liberal arts college in Vermont where no one had ever heard of Tashi Duncan or her star-crossed boys. You found an apartment—alone this time. No roommates. No shared keys. The walls were thin, and the pipes moaned in the winter, but at least it was yours.

You even got a therapist. Sometimes you lie to her. Sometimes you don’t. Mostly, you tell her you’re fine. Mostly, you try to believe it because life goes on.

But it starts with little things, at first. A knock on your door when no one’s there. A lightbulb unscrewed. A voicemail filled with static. You chalk it up to anxiety. Or trauma. Or both. The mind plays tricks when it’s lived too long in fear.

Then you find a postcard. No return address. No note. Just a photo of Stanford’s tennis courts. You stare at it for hours. Your hands don’t stop shaking for days.

You start checking your locks.

Twice. Then three times. You push furniture in front of the door. You stop answering calls from unknown numbers. You carry a knife in your jacket, one in your bedside drawer, and a third tucked between your mattress and the wall.

You tell yourself it’s just leftover fear; a scar from a time when your life wasn’t your own. But sometimes, at night, you hear the floor creak, and you know you locked the door.

You see her at the grocery store, just for a second. An hallucination, a dream, something real. A flash of dark curls. Her beautiful skin. That posture you could recognize anywhere—the cocky, impossible tilt of someone who never lost anything in her life.

Tashi.

You drop your basket. Run to the end of the aisle. Gone. You ask the cashier if they saw her, they say no one matching that description came in tonight.

You don’t sleep anymore. You stop going to the store. You stop going anywhere.

You install a camera. Just one, to be sure. Outside your door. You check it every night like a drug you can’t escape, refreshing the feed, watching for a shadow that never appears. Until one day it’s turned around, facing the wall.

Your therapist says you’re experiencing PTSD-induced paranoia and you simply nod at her.

But in your gut, you know, they’re still out there. And they’re not done with you.

The power goes out one night during a storm.

You light a candle. Sit in the kitchen. Try to calm the breathing that’s too shallow, too fast. You try not to think of knives or black robes or dripping masks. Then your phone buzzes. A single message. No number that you recognize.

“Still bleeding, final girl?”

You drop the phone. The screen cracks. You throw up in the sink that night, sweat spilling through every pores of your body with the fear consuming you. It’s like an awake-nightmare.

You go to the police the next morning. Again, like you had done before; a few days after Stanford, a week after Stanford, a month after Stanford – remembering the paranoia.

You tell them someone is stalking you. That you’ve received threats. That you survived a massacre and the killers were never caught. They write it all down.

They promise to look into it. They never call back. They never did.

You start to think you’re losing your mind.

You hear music sometimes. A tennis match broadcast faintly through the walls. A whisper behind your head when you’re brushing your teeth. You hear your name in the shower steam. You unplug everything. Cover mirrors to not see behind yourself. Start sleeping in the tub with the door locked, a knife in hand and every noise waking you up.

But they keep getting in. Somehow. They always get in.

You wake up one morning to find a trail of red shoe prints across your carpet and you almost throw up again. They are tiny tennis court prints. A racket on the table of your living room—you haven’t played tennis since Stanford. You never wanted to hear about it ever again.

Like someone dipped them in blood. You call the cops again. They don’t find anything, no prints, no camera footage; nothing.

The next time you see Patrick, it’s in a dream.

He’s sitting in your kitchen. Perfect posture, one leg crossed over the other, sipping tea from your mug like he’s lived here all along. “You’re slipping,” he says without looking up.

“I’m not.” You try to convince yourself – him, it’s all the same. Your heart is in your throat with the fear you feel. He’s not real, he’s not here; but he still has that hold onto you that you can’t escape. “You’re unraveling,” he continues. “It’s okay. You weren’t meant to live through it. That’s why it hurts so much.”

You try to scream, but your voice is gone. Patrick finally looks at you, and he’s wearing the mask. The scream is his now. Quiet and observing.

You try to leave town after a few days. Throw clothes into a bag. Book a motel two states away. You don’t leave a note. You don’t tell your therapist. You just go.

Halfway down the highway, your car dies like it was meant to be. Completely.

You sit on the shoulder, shivering, dialing roadside assistance. Then you check the trunk. Inside—under your spare tire—is a Ghostface mask. And a photo of you sleeping in the Vermont apartment.

You stop fighting it after that. You stop trying to convince anyone. No one believes the girl who lived. No one believes the crazy girl.

And they’ve made sure of that. They’re not just stalking you anymore. They’re gaslighting you from the inside. Everything around feels like a joke they created; a world just for you to suffer the lies and manipulation.

The final straw is the rabbit. You find it on your porch one morning. Tiny. White. Gutted. Its throat slit clean, like a signature – like something to remember them by. Pinned to its side is a note written in perfect, feminine script; the handwriting of Tashi that you can visualize back on the Stanford books.

“You should’ve died when we gave you the chance.”

You move the next day. You don’t care where. Anywhere but here.

The new place is better. Brighter. Busier.

There are windows that face the street, and you can see people. Real people. Families. Kids on bikes. Joggers with golden retrievers. It helps. For a while. You let yourself laugh again. Smile at strangers. Go out with friends you made in the tiny city.

You even start writing about what happened. Not for anyone else. Just for you. Just to get it out of your body before it rots you from the inside. Your therapist says it’s good progress. That you’re reclaiming your narrative.

That you’re healing. That you can be better.

And then, on a rainy Tuesday morning, you get a package. No return address. Inside: a VHS tape and a matchbook from Stanford’s campus bookstore. You don’t own a VHS player, but your neighbor does.

You tell her it’s for a film class and you watch it alone. It’s footages of you, in your old dorm. Sleeping. Showering. Crying into your pillow after the attack. You see Tashi in the corner of one frame. Art in another. Patrick whispering into the camera, smiling.

“We missed you.”

The walls start closing in again. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. You let yourself go.

You start hearing tennis balls thudding in the hall at night. You find your own handwriting scribbled across mirrors. You find locks broken that were never touched.

Sometimes you think about just walking into the woods, into the dark, into paranoia. But that’s what they want. They want you gone; but why?

So you start preparing. Not to run. To fight. To take back what’s yours. You buy cameras, wire your windows, train yourself to wake at every sound. You read books on serial killers, on survival, on how to set traps.

You wait. Because they’re coming. They always do. And this time, you’re not going to let them write the ending. But deep down; you know what you really fear.

Not that they’ll kill you, but that they’ll love you while they do it.

And that part of you… will love them back.

loosely (heavily) inspired by talia's edgy sixth grade poetry. hope you enjoy. comments and critiques welcome as always.

When he was about six or seven, he picked up a racket for the first time. Something to get his small body’s endless amounts of energy out. A way for his parents to spend even less time with him. He remembers poking the tip of his pinky finger through the netting, curling his small fingers around the handle, and suddenly he felt whole. He spent the rest of that day bouncing around the otherwise neglected court in his backyard, playing against the gate. He fell, scraped his knees, and grinned down at the peeling skin, the dotting red of blood rising to the surface. A battle scar of sorts. When he came back inside, the sky had grown dark. His parents had forgotten to make him dinner. He couldn’t have cared less. He slept it with it next to him that night, body thrumming with excitement at repeating the same routine when the sun rose. Patrick Zweig was a child once, full of potential for being something.

Tennis stuck around just like the circumstances that bred his attachment to it, a huge house without the love of a home, a neglectful set of parents that felt love was fulfilling obligations. He struggled to understand how he came from them, someone so vivacious, so full of passion for the very act of living, them having died the second they met one another, and refusing to let go and live again. He felt things too deeply to let himself be sad. Sad didn’t exist for him. Sad was too little. He felt everything in extremes, including a deep-rooted melancholy that only tennis could distract him from. His parents had hired a coach, spent the money on a ball machine. He stands tall at his side of the net, moving swiftly, brash as his voice, uproariously as his laughter. Eyes laser focused at all times on the ball, the machine. He couldn’t wait for the day that there would be another person to focus on. He wouldn’t stop some days until he felt numb, certain that his legs would scream from soreness the next day. Until he forgot that he knew how to feel at all. Patrick Zweig was a soldier, racket wielded like a shield at times, a sword in others, defending himself from the knowledge that this was all he had.

He didn’t miss his parents the way other kids did when he got shipped out to Florida. He didn’t necessarily miss his house, either, outside of the convenience of its large size. He remembers his bunkmate, Art, who he hadn’t learned to care for like it was his job yet, crying on the first night there. He wanted to help, really, but what was there to say? It was late, later than two young boys should be up, and he found his bare feet traveling across old, scratchy carpet and into Art’s bed. There was no acknowledgement between the two of them when he wrapped his arms around Art’s shaking body, nor when Art turned around to hold him right back. It didn’t feel uncomfortable for any longer than a second, like the needlepoint pinch of a shot before all you feel is the application of a bandage. Art fell asleep, eventually, and he watched for a while, as soft breaths left his parted lips, the heat noticeable against his chest. His leg had gone numb about 30 minutes ago, but he wouldn’t move until Art did. Patrick Zweig was a blanket, soft, warm and looking to shelter. 

Tennis and Art were second nature, just the way his vices were. He was prone to a night of drinking, sneaking through the dorm halls to find some of the older students’ stashes of cheap beer, smoking cigarettes because he saw it in the movies and was horrified when he began feeling his hands shake when there wasn’t smoke in his lungs, and then there were the girls. Girls who wore too short skirts and had long, pretty legs for him to hold onto, girls who smiled with teeth and had glinting canines that would leave marks in his neck if given the chance, girls who had voices like a siren, and just a call of his name set his mind racing. He thought dating was just liking someone’s presence for a long time. Simply enjoying their proximity, their being, their taste. He wishes he’d learned that wasn’t true before Tashi. No one had ever really told him otherwise. It’s not like his parents were a great example to base his future romantic endeavors on. She handled him with care, in her own way. Let him ease his way into sharing himself with someone that wasn’t Art. She wasn’t gentle, necessarily, but careful. She held his face when they kissed, he remembers. Like he couldn’t keep it up himself. Like he was fragile. It killed him when she let go of him, some argument that never needed to happen had they both not been scared to let things be more than physical intimacy. Patrick wanted it, needed it, craved it like it was air and he’d had his head held underwater. He regretted every bit of harshness that he’d shown, even if he did mean some of it. She was allowed to be mean to him, it was still her attention. He had no right to act otherwise, he'd done nothing to deserve someone like Tashi's kindness. He left, and wanted her to realize that she was losing something beautiful, or at least, something with the potential to be. He doesn’t know what idea hurts worse: the idea she never realized, or that she did, and still let him go. Patrick Zweig was glass, soft and delicate until it shatters, and slices through you like you’re nothing more than paper. 

He imagines the sound that Tashi’s knee might have made sometimes, when he’s got nothing else to distract himself with. He wants to know what the sound of an angel losing its wings, crashing down to human mediocrity, sounds like. He saw it, though, the look on her face. So scared of feeling powerless she wouldn’t even cry with her world crumbling around her. She wasn’t strong, she wasn’t brave, she was just really, really stubborn. Maybe that’s why she’d started screaming when she saw him. Because he could read her. Because if she yelled loud enough, she’d be back at the Open, crying out victory. If her voice was the loudest, engulfing everyone else’s, she’d still won some kind of game. Art, though, didn’t need to do what he’d done. Art hurt him just to stand at Tashi’s side. He’d still forgive him, if he was given the chance. In fact, he did try. His messages never went through. Tashi picked up a call once, one placed in a lonely, slightly drunk stupor. They’d laughed back and forth, banter, insults that he considered playful. His were, anyway. He thought they were making it back to normalcy, until Tashi’s clear, crisp voice said “Go to hell, Patrick” and the only sound left behind was the dull beeping of an ended phone call. He stopped trying after that. Patrick Zweig was a dog, whimpering, waiting by the door for his masters to come home and kick him again. 

He stopped winning soon after that. He had no one to win for, not even himself. He’d left himself in the doorway of that little med area beneath the Stanford tennis courts. He wonders what they did with him. Was he swept away by a janitor with the other garbage? Stepped on beneath Art’s shoe? Silently, he hoped the failure, the constant code violations, would grab their attention for just a moment. It’s better that they think him pathetic than not think about him at all. He’s somewhat grateful for having hit rock bottom, because he no longer recognized himself without some kind of struggle. His parents had stopped caring years prior, and then again, they probably never cared at all. Tennis no longer a refuge, but an obligation, a way to make just enough money to buy himself some food, the gas to fuel his car. The car that’s become his home when no one is there to help him otherwise. Sex has become the refuge. Sex he doesn’t even want to be having anymore. He hardly feels anything but cotton sheets beneath his body, and that spurs him to keep going. Keep going and sleep. He usually leaves, regardless of if he wants to. Sometimes it’s nothing, leaving without notice. But there are times where he’d do anything to be a better man, someone these women deserve. He remembers a girl from White Plains that he would’ve let himself try something with, had he not been so scared. It made the nights leading up to his inevitable departure, wrapped up in her sheets, all the more painful. He watched her face contort and tried to memorize it, though it faded with time, like all things do. He liked knowing he’d done something for her, even if it was killing him inside. At least he’s still capable of doing something good. Patrick Zweig was a cigarette, burning from the inside out just to give someone else their fix, and he loved the ache. He was addicted to it. 

When he met you, he was prepared to make the most of his future loss. He would do anything to make his temporary stay something worth it. He would be good for you, even if he’d be nothing but destructive if he stayed. He didn’t know how to be anything other than self-sabotaging, really. He recognized the look in your eyes as one he’d had years before, youthfulness, passion, a need to make something of yourself, a hope to do that with someone accompanying you. Maybe he liked that he could treat you will, living vicariously through you, giving a version of himself the love he likes to think he deserved, but knows he didn’t. But, little by little, you chipped away at the layers of jadedness buried beneath his skin. He remembers one night, in your bed, you’d held his face for hours, silent, just looking at him, rubbing your thumbs over the stubble on his cheeks. He didn’t touch you in return. He was still scared that anything he laid a hand on would be ruined by him, would ruin him right back. Your hands didn’t come away bloodied, your eyes never turned cold, and when you did speak, it was never above a whisper. When you’d fallen asleep that night, bathed in moonlight, he knew. There was no avoiding the inevitability of being human. He’d forgotten that he still was one. But you’d cultivated him like a seed, feeding him tenderness he’d never been afforded until all he could find it in himself to do was give it back. He blossomed back into something under your hands. A man who laughs freely and touches without shame. The lover he’d always hoped to be, somewhere down the line. Patrick Zweig is just a man, and he’s happy to be something so simultaneously simple and complex. He’s happy to just be.

annie can we kiss under the slide

Snippits from "Endure" [sfw]

A longer piece I'm slowly working on, exploring Patrick's life. It jumps back and forth from the past to the present as he recalls moments from his childhood while also visiting his family properly for the first time in years. If you've stuck around, you've seen me post bits from this before.

I'm taking a mini-break for school right now so I don't have anything new and complete, but I'd like to give you guys a little more from what I've shared before. This is my favorite work in progress right now!

Patrick has a small list of memories he allows himself to think about. He prefers the company of the time he first kissed a girl ('02, Cindie McLoud), or the last time he got a ribeye steak, imagining how the juice pooled down his tongue and throat, the rosemary butter in his nose and the meat in his teeth. They were bittersweet, but they passed the time and dulled the ache in his heart.

His longing heart. How it begged for Patrick to remember more.

There are times he lets himself remember, crystal clear recollections that he calls to only when the cold of winter nips at his bones through the door of his CR-V, the heater cranked too high and Hot-Hands stuffed everywhere he can get them. When the memory of a ribeye does nothing for the groaning rumble of his stomach, as his account mocks him with $27.89, and his tank teasing E. It was a different kind of pain to feel than the freezing bite of cold.

He's biting the end of an unlit cigarette so hard he can taste the filter and even the nicotine, grimacing and spitting it out onto the sidewalk. When he moves to grab another one to light, the pack's empty. Everything Patrick has left is for gas and something to eat tomorrow, so he leaves it, going back to staring at the house before him.

Patrick hasn't been here in almost fifteen years, but it feels like the most familiar place on Earth. He could still map it out, give every corner and every secret and every detail with his eyes closed, tell you the best spots to hide. It almost feels good to be back, like something died in him is giving its last croaking breath and reaching out to that house, and he wants to just shove it back in and turn around.

His father, narrow-browed and imposing at the head of the table, sipping from wine as he fired accusations across to him.

"How's your forehand? It better be improving."

"I've spoken to your coaches, do you think you're doing good? Don't lie to me, boy"

"Your teachers say you've been slacking off. Is this how your mother and I raised you? A slacker. A failure?"

The last one spoken as he loosened his tie, the table quiet and as tense as a pulled bow. Everyone waited for his fingers to slip, for the arrow to shoot. Patrick could feel it strike him right in his heart. His longing heart.

"Your mother and I've decided you're staying during the breaks. It's a waste of time— I'll pay someone to keep coaching you there."

He was bleeding into his lap, sputtering onto the table, pooling across the floor beneath him and soaking into his socks, and nobody cared to ask.

The next Christmas break is spent on the court, hitting targets and biting the inside of his cheeks. Going back to climb into his empty room with his arms screaming exhaustion and legs shaking with every step, Art's side silent and empty, with a small envelope on his bed and $500 inside. Flipping the envelope upside down. Maybe, just maybe... no. No card.

His eyes stayed on the flashing red and green lights out his window, wondering what they're doing back home, listening to Backstreet's Back low on Art's stereo. Imagining the taste of his grandmother's challah and brisket and wishing his father was pulling that bow and pointing it to his chest at the table. Patrick whispered what he thought he'd say, harsh and cutting and accusatory, the words seeping into the wallpaper and holding them for him.

He couldn't look at it, at those walls holding his pain in its pores. Patrick could hear them spoken back like an echo, and covering his ears did nothing to stop them. The words like water seeping through the cracks in his fingers, pouring and absorbing into him until they became everything he is. His whole body the voice of his father across the table. Even now, at thirty-one, he's never been wrung dry.

I Could Be a Good Mother

or: What the process to Lily was

an: thank you to all beta readers for the first paragraph. not proof read. comments always appreciated. love you all.

warnings for mentions of pregnancy loss

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When she was young, the plan was to name her daughter something exciting. Something reminiscent of herself. She contemplated Natasha, of course, the name her parents had originally planned on placing on her. Identifying herself as Natasha, after living so long under her actual name, felt wrong now, but she wouldn’t mind giving a piece of what could’ve been to her future daughter. She always wondered what made Tashi come about, a heat of the moment decision on her mother’s part. When she asked, tugging at the hem of her mother’s shirt as she read a novel too dense for a girl of Tashi’s age, the response was plain. Because she just knew. She gazed down at a small body, smaller than even now, a head of soft, curling hair, and eyes as warm as melted chocolate, and knew her daughter’s name. She placed it upon her with a kiss to her forehead, and there she was. Tashi Duncan. Her mother smiled down at the girl, so big and so small all at once, and said she’d know, too, when the time came. She’d know, just like she had. Like mother , like daughter. And when daughter became mother all her own, the chain would continue to grow. 

When she was just a bit older, smiling with missing front teeth, not whole but feeling complete, she wanted to name her daughter Billie. Billie who she read yellowed biographies on her knees in the library, leaning against the shelves. Billie who ran the court like it was hers to own, and as far as Tashi was concerned, she did. Billie, who her parents reluctantly let her admire, but told her that even if she was a great player, one of the greatest, she wasn’t necessarily someone to be admired. Tashi didn’t quite understand it at the time, being young enough to understand when subtext was present, but not old enough to decipher the code behind a restless hand toying with a cross necklace. Nevertheless, as long as Tashi was passionate about tennis, she’d be passionate about Billie Jean King. She always thought it funny, the queen of tennis with ‘king’ for a last name. Maybe it was intentional irony on the universe’s part, something to rub men’s noses in. Or maybe she was both a king and a queen in her own right. Tashi wanted that. She wanted a court named in her honor, because for all the world knew, tennis had been reinvented under her capable hands. She wanted the world to watch as the courts molded beneath her feet like clay, precise, aggressive, and see the potential for what the sport could be. Her daughter, with this name, might gain that power through it. Be a king and a queen all the same. 

At her confirmation, a knee-length skirt bursting around her like a blooming flower, beaming with pride, she decided her daughter’s name would be Joan. Joan after her chosen saint, Joan of Arc. It felt appropriate for her. Fitting to choose a name of someone so dauntless, so unmistakably determined to stick by her beliefs. Even at twelve, everyone knew that Tashi was not a girl, but a force of nature. She functioned more like the wind did than a person, graceful and elegant in its lightest forms, biting and unforgiving at its harshest. She wanted to be a dichotomy. The less people understood, the more she could work against another person without their realizing, on the court and off it, if need be. She found herself imagining, just for a moment, that the beaming faces of proud aunts, uncles, cousins, even strangers, were watching her burn at the stake, just as her namesake of sorts had, and she liked to think that it was a rite of passage to undergo something so painful. It was what made Joan of Arc the saint she now is, was it not? Perhaps to become something, the present you, the good in you, had to die. Maybe that’s what makes a person matter. So, she hoped to change. She hoped to leave old her behind. And when she stepped down to greet family, kiss cheeks and shake hands, and people asked her who her role model is, she felt her hands fidget with the golden cross settled on her sternum when she said Billie Jean King. Her grandmother, warm and soft with old age, took her by the hand that day and thanked her. Thanked her for becoming a woman of God, as she was intended to do. For being a great future wife and mother. She didn’t like the lack of ‘tennis player’ in that list, but it would have to do. After all, it’s what she was made for. 

After Patrick, after her knee, she thinks she knows what Joan of Arc felt like when she looked down from heaven. She had to die to become something. What she had become, she wasn’t sure of. A coach, yes, and Art’s coach no less, but what else? She hoped that by falling from grace, she would land on some other variation of it. A fall from one pillowy, cushioned world to another. She tried, really, not to hate him for it. His successes that should have been hers, and they were in a way. She’d liked that after all, his malleability. He was becoming her. He was pressed and folded into serving with the power of her muscles and winning with the ease of a body which knew nothing but victory. They were her victories if he was her. But, when all is said and done, and she sits in bed while he sleeps, she knows he loves him more than she resents him. She loves that he stayed, despite no longer being the Tashi he’d met at that Adidas party. She loves that he holds her up, even when she lies and says she needs no support. She loves that in all his softness, he could love something so cold as her. She felt no fear when he proposed, because she wanted it to happen, and that meant he’d want it, too. And she wanted that daughter she’d dreamed of as a girl. She wanted her Joan to have an intellect like her own and a tenderness like her father. She wanted flowing brown hair and eyes that crinkle at their corners when they lift with a smile. She wanted a daughter, so Art would want one, too. 

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When they discussed it the first time, her ring felt heavier. She knew he wanted a family, that much was clear. He was more obvious than she’d been, all lingering eyes on small children and brushes of hands against tiny clothing. He never addressed it outwardly, not directly the way she does, but he showed his desire in his own way. He nearly cried when she asked him, and if she hadn't been smart enough to specify that she meant after the wedding, he would’ve begged her to start right away. He needed to be a father the same way she needed to be a mother. He needed to see himself create something worthwhile, he needed to know that he’d leave something beautiful behind when there was nothing left for his body to give. Tashi needed something, someone, to stare at her with the wonder that she felt from the stands as a teen. She wanted to know her life hadn’t amounted to a ‘should’ve been’, an unhappy accident, an act of God. She needed something tangible to place her love on, and just her love on. No living vicariously. No resentment. He wiped his eyes and kissed her like he had never been more in love with her than in that moment, and things felt simple. No arguments, no questioning, not a lick of concern for the future. She was going to get her daughter, her Joan, and she was going to be the most wonderful thing the world would ever know.

Her ring, the larger, newer one of the two, weighed heavy on her hand as she rolled her fingers in little waves against the marble sink. Two minutes. Two minutes that she hardly breathed for. They’d been trying and trying for months. Months of intimacy as a means to an end, rather than based on desire. Months and months and nothing seemed to stick. She felt sick each time she felt the telltale nauseating warmth of blood between her legs, the sharp ache of a cramp, like a mace swung at her insides. She felt sick when she knew she wasn’t doing the one thing she was put here for. Each time she spoke about it to her mother, she’d just sigh through the speaker of the phone, say that everything happens for a reason. That God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers, and it’d only make her victory that much more deserved. She felt no desire to be strong anymore. She hoped to be weak so that things became easier. But two minutes was up, and when she flipped the small plastic figure over in its place, two red lines down its center, she practically kissed the ground she collapsed to. Art found her there, attentive even from the other room, with her shoulders heaving and her back arched in on itself, as if shielding herself from the world. When he sees the positive test, he folds himself into the same position. He might just cry harder.

Imagine her shock when the screen was flipped her way and she saw three little shapes. Not one, but three. Three little girls. They had to be. The nurse had crinkled her nose when she said so, said it was still far too early to tell, but she knew. Tashi knew that there was never any other option for her. Three. The perfect number. Her own holy trinity to praise. Truly, they would be what she devoted herself to. She had won her battle, even though she’d never asked to fight it. She searched for Art’s hand to take in her own, and when her eyes met his they were fearful, yes, but delighted all the same. It was perfect. The ideal number. Her Joan, her Billie, her Natasha. He looked at that blurry image, all black and white fuzz and imagination-filled gaps, with the reverence of dog to owner, student to teacher. If they thought about it hard enough, they could feel their place in the world shifting. They could see each object come into itself, particle by particle. Each edge seemed a bit softer now. She felt a prayer on the tip of her tongue and silenced it with a sob. There was no time for piety. She felt the battle was won, and the war wasn’t even over.

Tashi was an analytical woman. Everything through a scrutinizing lens. Each detail perceived, judged, shuffled away to be dealt with. And as she analyzed the look on the doctor’s face when he came in, she knew. She knew and wanted to hear none of it. There was nothing to be done. No medication, no procedure. Her relief would come when they’d finally stop suffering. She didn’t tell Art, couldn’t tell Art. She didn’t tell him on the car ride home, tears stagnant in her waterline, lips pursed and trembling, but never breaking. She didn’t tell him when he saw the expression on her face. She didn’t have to. She needed space. Air. Sleep. A hug. A better body. A kinder God. She needed to be stronger. She needed to be weaker. When out of his line of vision, surrounded by the bed that could only have been where the lives still within her were born, she squeezed her eyes shut and hit. She hit, hit, hit and hoped it developed sentience just so it could feel the pain of each impact. But she wouldn’t lay there. She crumpled like an old flower, browning and dry, and for the first time in her life, there were no prayers to be said. She unclasped the thin gold chain from around her neck, holding its limp form in her palms. She cupped it beneath her lips, whispered ‘please, please, please’ until all that came out was air. But she felt no different. She felt no change. She threw it across the room, landing with a small, metallic tink. She hoped she’d been wrong all her life. There was no God. No God would let her suffer so much and be rewarded with so little. No kind, loving God would treat her this way after spending so much time praising him. No God would not let her serve the purpose she was put her for. Be fruitful and multiply. Why not her? They slept quietly that night, backs against each other. She slipped out from beneath the covers to scoop the chain up in her palms and tuck it into the drawer of her nightstand. Just in case, she didn’t want to anger him either.

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When those two lines did appear again, her thumbnail dragging up and down the length of them, she didn’t quite feel joy. Because it was never supposed to be her. Of course, she was happy, somewhere, beneath that clouded, murky water of grief. For her babies. For herself. For what ifs and should haves. But, she would take it. She would hold her girl proudly in her arms upon arrival, she would watch herself change, grow, widen, and not be horrified by such a thing, and she would hate this little girl as much as she loved her. She wouldn’t recycle a name. She couldn’t make this child identify as another. And she knew, as her mother had, that when she arrived, she’d just know who she was. For now, though, she made her way to her nightstand, slipped open the drawer, and connected the clasp of the chain behind her neck again.

happy mother’s day to this milf <3

:( i love him im gonna crumple him up

bodyguard | patrick zweig x reader

warnings: SMUT 18+, this is a blurb

It almost ends in silence.

That kind of silence that isn’t soft or thoughtful or pregnant with meaning—it’s thick, charged, bitter. The kind that fills a car when one person wants to speak and the other refuses to be heard.

Patrick’s hands are clenched on the steering wheel. Knuckles white. Jaw tighter than it needs to be. You’re staring out the window, blinking hard against the sting in your eyes. Not crying. Not yet.

The fight—if you can call it that—wasn’t loud. It never is with him. Just a deflection here, a shrug there. You asked a simple question. Something like "How are you, really?" Something like "Let me in."

And he did what he always does. Shut the door.

You almost got out when he pulled into your building’s lot. Almost left him there, sitting in the blue wash of streetlights with his hands still gripping the wheel like it’s the only thing anchoring him to this earth.

But something in you stayed.

Because even in the worst of it—even when he’s all teeth and armor—you can see the boy behind the racket. The one who’s tired of being hard all the time.

So you twist in your seat.

He’s still facing forward, and you can see it—the crack in his armor. The set of his shoulders isn’t quite as stubborn. His grip on the wheel is no longer furious, just tight. Like he’s not sure if he should let go.

And you know this version of him.

You’ve seen him at ten—spinning, sharp-tongued, manic with energy he doesn't know where to put. You’ve seen him on the court, teeth bared, eyes wild. You’ve seen him explode and implode all in the same hour.

But you’ve also seen him at zero. At nothing. The mornings he can’t get out of bed. The press days he skips and blames on jet lag when really, it’s the weight in his chest.

You know how to read his silences. The kinds that ask you to stay even when he won’t say it out loud.

You’ve never wanted to fix him. You’ve just wanted to be there. Wanted to be the one thing in his world that didn’t want anything from him.

You speak softly, like you’re talking to a wounded thing. “Patrick, I’m not trying to fix anything.”

He still doesn’t look at you.

“I just wanna know what’s going on in there,” you add, tapping lightly on the side of your head. “You don’t have to make it nice. You don’t even have to make it make sense. I just… want to know you’re here.”

Another pause. This one stretches.

He finally exhales through his nose. Barely audible.

“I don’t talk about shit like that,” he mutters. “Never have.”

You nod. “Yeah. I figured.” You shift, turning to face him fully. “But you let me be here. Every time. So either you want something real, or you don’t. And if you do... I need you to stop pretending you're alone.”

That lands. You see it in the way his fingers loosen on the steering wheel.

And then he finally looks at you.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says.

You blink. “What, talk?”

He almost laughs, but it dies in his throat. “Yeah. That. All of it.”

“Then don’t talk,” you say. “Just let me in.”

And that’s when you move.

You lean in slowly. Not to comfort. To reach. You press your mouth to his—soft, sure, no hesitation. He responds like it hurts. Like it heals. Like he’s been waiting for permission to fall apart.

Your hand slips into his hair. His jaw slackens. The car windows fog.

It’s not a rush. Not at first.

But soon you’re climbing into his lap, straddling him, your knees bracketing his hips, the console digging into your thigh and neither of you caring. His hands settle on your waist, unsure.

“You don’t have to do anything,” you whisper against his jaw. “Just let me be here.”

And when you grind down, he gasps like he’s breaking.

You kiss him again. Deeper. Messier. Like a promise made with tongue and teeth and breath.

You press your forehead to his and say, “Let me take care of you.”

And when you rock your hips again, when his hands grip you like you’re the only real thing he’s ever held, he lets you.

For once—he lets you.

You pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are heavy, lips parted, chest heaving. You guide him gently, tugging down the waistband of his sweats, freeing him fully. He’s already slick in your hand, the head flushed, and his breath stutters as you shift your hips.

“Can I?” you murmur.

He nods—almost frantic—and you line yourself up with shaking fingers.

When you sink down onto him, it’s slow and devastating. Your breath catches at the stretch, the fullness, the feeling of him beneath you, inside you, finally here. His hands clutch at your waist like he’s afraid you’ll disappear.

The car is too small for this, too cramped, but it doesn’t matter. Your bodies find rhythm anyway. A language made of friction and breath and everything you’ve never needed words for.

The smell of his cologne has long faded under the weight of everything else—sweat, sex, and the faintest trace of smoke from the ashtray by the gearshift. There’s a lipstick-stamped cigarette butt half-buried beneath a crumpled parking receipt. He hasn’t cleaned this car in months. It smells like late-night drives, like sweatshirts in the backseat, like every fight you’ve almost had and every kiss you didn’t mean to give.

The cracked vinyl seat beneath your knees sticks to your skin. Somewhere in the background, the faint click of the hazard light ticks like a metronome. The windows fog faster than you can clear them. The Honda rocks with every roll of your hips.

The ceiling liner droops slightly overhead. The rearview mirror is useless now, fogged over and tilted sideways from where his elbow knocked it loose.

None of it matters.

You’re the only thing that matters.

He curses when your hand returns to where your bodies meet, when your fingers circle just right. You smile, not teasing, just full of something fierce and warm and steady.

“Let me take it,” you whisper. “All of it. Just for tonight.”

His head falls back. His mouth falls open.

You keep going until he’s shaking. Until he’s saying your name like it’s the only thing left that’s his.

When he comes, you hold him there. Through it. Around it. Until he’s panting against your neck, hands still gripping your hips like they’re his last prayer.

You follow a heartbeat later. The kind of release that steals your breath, curls your toes, and makes your chest ache.

And after—you don’t move.

You just breathe. Let the sweat cool. Let the quiet settle.

You press your palm flat against his chest and feel it thudding wildly beneath your skin.

You don’t ask him to say anything. You don’t need him to explain.

You hold him the way he’s never let anyone hold him—without expectation, without question.

Like softness is a shield.

Like love can be a place to rest.

-----

tagging: @kimmyneutron@babyspiderling @queensunshinee @hanneh69 @jamespotteraliveversion @glennussy @awaywithtime @artstennisracket @artdonaldsonbabygirl @blastzachilles @jordiemeow

i want to line them up and tuck them into bed with the blanket just below their chins all snuggly

meet… STANFORD ERA LESBIAN!ATP .ᐟ ★

a/n: hi guys the much promised part two of lesbian!atp headcanons… stanford edition! so sorry it took me three weeks to get these out i am in an insane slump right now…… i’ll be free soon (hopefully) i have so much i want to get out. and also thank you @peariote some of these are taken from conversations we have had… and thank you @diyasgarden my lovely for helping me flesh out tashi. anyway. please enjoy. smiles. 

CW: hints at nsfw

ART - VISUAL ARTS MAJOR .ᐟ

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who swears you’re her muse. Always begging you to let her use you as a model for whatever she’s working on, he’s positive her work simply turns out better when it’s of you. Nevermind the fact you’re almost always nude. 

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who is always covered in charcoal and paint, to the point he’s like a magnet. Even if she’s not doing a project with those mediums, it still finds its way onto him. Little do you know it’s because you said you loved the way she looks with it one day, and she’s never looked back.

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART who loves that he has to learn photography because it means she can always capture moments of you for forever. Always has a camera on him whenever he’s with you to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. Anything from being in the shower to falling apart under her. She even teaches you photography just so you can take photos of her between your thighs or when her hands are too busy elsewhere to hold a camera.

– VISUAL ARTS MAJOR ART whose exhibitions always feature at least one piece of you, whether it be painting, photo, or sculpture, and are always dedicated to you. Whenever he sneaks you in for ‘early access,’ he always shows you these with the biggest grin on her face. She swears one day he’s going to do an exhibition solely of you (Never including the nude pieces. Those are hers and hers only). You know she will.   

PAT - FINANCE MAJOR .ᐟ

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who went into finance for his parents, who want her to take over after graduating. He absolutely hates it, but listens and goes for the four years anyway. Their grades are average, simply because she cannot care enough to do more than scrape by. Despite the hatred, she still becomes the biggest finance bro possible. 

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who has in fact been attempted to be recruited to a frat before. Walking past a tent during rush week had them handing him a form until they opened their mouth and spoke. This is his favourite story to tell when trying to get someone into her bed (“Come on, I was basically a frat brother. I can show you a good time too.”).

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who is somehow at a new party every night. Brings a new girl home every night too, partially in thanks to the frat story above. Is known around campus for being the biggest sleazebag ever, but no one really cares if it means they get a night with her. 

– FINANCE MAJOR PAT who meets you and decides maybe you can change them. A one night stand where you treat her the best he’s ever been treated absolutely changes her world, and one night turns into two, and then three, and then she decides maybe there is more to life than just sleeping around and finally locks you down for herself (but it does take time for her to get used to just the one person, and there are some flirting incidents in the beginning). 

TASHI - COGNITIVE SCIENCE MAJOR .ᐟ

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who is the most disciplined person in college. Like poster girl of discipline level discipline. She creates a schedule and actually sticks to it. As you spend more time with her, you eventually catch onto it as well, and start doing most things together.

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who is incredibly dedicated to her studies. One of the top students in her classes. She is always studying whenever she has time, but hates not being around you. Her favourite kind of date is studying with you at a library or cafe, where she doesn’t need to choose between you and her work. 

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI whose favourite courses are the natural sciences, particularly chemistry and biology. Something about learning how the body’s natural chemicals and processes draws her in, but she wants to make a difference with it, to make it mean something. So she minors in sociology alongside cog sci. 

– COG SCI MAJOR TASHI who eventually takes the MD and PhD route, so she can do research and help in a medical setting. She spends her time in class one day, volunteering at a hospital and shadowing a doctor the next, and uses what she learns to do exactly what she wanted to. To do something bigger than herself.

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