i...cannot begin to tell you how much this does not fit your prompt, i'm so sorry!
HOWEVER. i guess i'm adding merbuck(leys) to my list of actual wips because i am blaming/thanking @exhaustedpirate for having SO MANY GOOD IDEAS that i am semi-confident in saying there will be more of this at some point, and a madney sequel to come at some other point.
Tommy feels a little embarrassed any time he thinks about the amount of money he dropped on The Finland. She's such an indulgence, and Tommy's normally a pretty frugal guy. But he can fly helicopters at work, and he loves his truck and well, when he had an unexpected win on an impulsively purchased scratcher he figured…why not?
He has enough in his budget to handle maintenance and marina fees and all the associated stuff, and he'd thought about it idly a few times, but when enough money to buy a 38ft sailing yacht outright fell into his lap, it seemed like a no-brainer. He's had her docked down at Leeward Bay for the last couple years, and he loves her. She's been modified to be easier for a single person to take out, and she's small and sleek and simple.
He likes taking people out on her, both in a romantic sense — it makes for an amazing date on the rare occasions Tommy gets far enough with a guy for 'wanna come out on my boat?' not to sound like a serial killer — and just with friends or people from work. Everyone he knows with kids certainly appreciate it. Every month of so, when they can get their shifts to line up, he and Sal take her out with an ice-box of beer to do some fishing.
So yeah, while he knows he could have done something more sensible, more responsible, with the money, he doesn't regret the indulgence. She's been well worth the investment.
Best of all, he likes taking her out on his own. It's similar to being in the air, but a little less stressful, because he's not constantly focused on maintaining her. It's like the peace that comes from giving the finger to gravity and taking to the air, but without the constant action required for that. Tommy doesn't think he's ever been so relaxed as the times he takes The Finland out into open water on a clear sunny day.
Today is a perfect example. Nominally, he's fishing, but realistically he's baking in the sun and getting lost in his thoughts with a fishing pole next to him. He's caught a grand total of one calico bass large enough to keep, and he'll probably portion it up when he gets home, freeze some and have the rest tonight with a salad. For now, it's in the second ice box, and Tommy's finishing off a beer from the first one, feeling comfortable and lazy and relaxed.
One of the major benefits of shift work is that he can take The Finland out at quieter times. He's seen a party boat, and a couple of other fishing parties but other than that, all there is to hear is the sound of the waves and the playlist Sal's kids made for him coming quietly from his phone. They're determined to broaden his horizons, and he can't say no to them, so he's listening to a lot of pop music recently. The unfamiliarity and the easy rhythm of it makes it feel like he's in a little bubble all of his own, and he can feel his eyes drooping.
One of the things he loves about The Finland is how comfortable she is, so he doesn't think too hard before he stretches out across a couple of seats and gets comfortable. It's been a run of heavy shifts, and as much as Tommy loves his job, he has to admit it's wearing on him more the older he gets. He's reminded of the way Gina and the kids tease Sal about 'resting his eyes' and he feels a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he drifts off.
It's only when he jolts awake at the peeping of an alarm that he realizes he should have packed away his fishing gear before he got too comfortable. Disoriented, he still manages to reel in the fish, but it's too small to keep so he tosses it back.
He must be more tired than he realized, because just for a split second, he could swear it looks like a hand bobs out of the water and catches the fish in mid-air. He stares at the patch of water where it seemed to happen and then has to laugh at himself.
"Get it together, Kinard," he mutters, and starts packing up his fishing gear.
He loves sailing back into the marina as the sun sets, so he's perfectly content to stay out on the water a bit longer, but the fact that he just thought he saw a hand emerging from the waves out at sea is all the evidence he needs to be sure he shouldn't be thinking about anything more involved than controlling The Finland.
🧜♂️🧜♂️🧜♂️
Ever since he was a little fry, Buck has been told to stay away from the surface, away from the humans and their boats. They have nets and hooks and spears, and machines that cough out smoke and oil and despoil the waters, and all these things are true, but Buck has been curious — too curious for his own good, according to his parents. Maddie used to say the same, but then she grew curious enough to fall for a human man and left the ocean behind. It only increased Buck's interest, even once her visits to the rocky shore where she used to come to wave to him trailed away into nothing.
Even if he wasn't fascinated by the human world, by their unfamiliar speech and their strange ways of moving and their clumsy efforts to swim, he loves the surface. There are few things he likes more than breaking through the surface of the waves to feel the strange, unsalted water of rain across his gills. The only thing that beats it is feeling the unfiltered warmth of the sun on his skin, instead of just in the water around him.
There's a boat not too far away when he breaches the surface, and he lets himself sink back down, enough that only his eyes are above the water. It's a small boat, and it's not trailing any of the vicious nets he's seen before, and Buck is very well camouflaged, so he's not too worried. There's no sign of a human that he can see anyway, so he feels safe enough to splash around a little, enjoying the warmth and the breeze and the play of sunshine on the waves.
When he gets a little closer to the boat, he hears music. Buck loves music. There is music under the sea — the never-ending rhythm of the water itself, and the crooning of the whales. Some merfolk fashion instruments from the things available to them, but they never sound anything like human music. It's so…so vibrant. So alive. He doesn't get to hear it very often, except on moonless nights where he dares to get close enough to shore that he can see humans dancing, their silvery laughter weaving its way through the music.
He can't resist, stops splashing and swims smoothly and cleanly just below the surface until he's close enough to break through the waves almost close enough to touch the boat. The music makes him smile, and Buck allows himself to enjoy the moment, feeling warm and comfortable and happy.
When the moment comes, it's pure instinct. Buck hasn't eaten in a while, and when he gets the brief scent of fish carried by surface wind rather than underwater currents, he reacts before he can think, reading one hand up above the surface to catch the silvery body as it's thrown from the boat. He freezes, letting himself sink below the surface, but nothing happens. There's no shout, no movement, nothing but the continuous music, sounding distorted and strange but still good through the water.
Safe in the shadow of the boat, Buck eats his fish, looking contemplatively up at the surface. It's so strange — a boat playing music, presumably being sailed by a human that Buck still hasn't caught sight of, a fish thrown straight at him like an offering. Buck's parents always say that curiosity kills the catfish, but once Buck's finished his snack, he can't resist moving up through the water, closer to the sun, closer to the boat. He breaks the surface, has enough sense to be careful about it, just his eyes above the gentle splashing of the wave.
That's all it takes though, because as soon as Buck blinks his nicitating membranes, he's making eye-contact with a human man who's leaning over the side of the boat, looking down into the sea. Buck freezes in the water, body tensed and ready to dive, but the man is just looking at him. He's not reaching for a weapon, he's not screaming about monsters, which has happened to Buck once before, and honestly kind of hurt his feelings. The man is just staring. It's the perfect opportunity for Buck to disappear into the depths, but the music is still playing, and it's difficult to imagine anything too awful could happen when the sky and the sea are so blue, when the sun is so warm, and the music is so entrancing, and the man looking at him is so still and looks so much more interested than he does afraid or angry.
Finally, the man shifts, but it's only to lean a little closer and speak.
"Can you — can you understand me?"
"Yes," Buck says, and the man staggers back a little, looking unsteady on his feet.
Concerned, Buck surges forward, but the man has already righted himself and is leaning in again.
"I don't — what are you?" he asks, sounding fascinated.
"I'm a merman," Buck says, using his tail to flick a spray of water towards the boat.
The man laughs, sounding disbelieving and entertained and so, so interesting.
"What's your name?" he asks.
Buck considers it for a moment, fiddling with the circle of seaweed around his wrist.
"Evan," he says, giving the man his true name, rather than the one his friends usually call him, unsure why.
I wrote this right before my first morning meeting, so if it's rushed and makes no sense, I'm well aware. Enjoy!
+
The very second Tommy went with helicopters, people came crawling out of the woodwork to offer their two cents on everything from industry politics (all dangled carrots and empty promises) to what constitutes a good operator (whoever's actually signing your paycheck at the time) to which jobs would bring in the most money (ditching helicopters entirely in favor of planes) to the best ways to manage stress (avoiding utility altogether).
But the one piece of advice Tommy has never forgotten came from one of his first operators in Afghanistan, who had a face like a mountain crag and every word that came out of his mouth had to first find its way around the wad of dip permanently attached to his bottom gums.
"Being able to find the wind is the only skill you need to nail down, or else you're gonna frag out faster'n you can say 'high as bat pussy'. The odds of being able to see the leaves on a fuckin' tree are less'n nothin' out here, never mind spottin' a fuckin' windsock, Kinard. The second you get in the air, you just listen to your bird; she'll tell you point blank where the wind is, so long as you've got your ears on."
Then Warrant Officer Harold hocked a loogie the size of a crow at the ground and stormed away, shouting, "PRIVATE KEATON, IF YOU DON'T STOP FONDLIN' THAT REFUEL PROBE I'M GONNA SHOVE IT IN YOUR DICK HOLE!"
Twenty years later, Tommy's in the cockpit of his favorite AW139 with the mouth of a glock pressed right above his brain stem, and the second he achieves optimal altitude, he finds the wind.
"You make it look so effortless, like it's just something your body does. Like breathing," Evan had said during their one and only legal flight together, like he wasn't furious that Tommy had woken him up at 3:30 in the morning on his day off to go for a joyride. Even as the sun peeked over the horizon to see if the coast was clear, it couldn't hope to match the sheer brightness of Evan's smile.
If being able to find the wind wasn't practically part of his autonomic nervous system at this point in his career, Tommy'd have no business being in the air at all.
"Remember," the guy with the gun, Remo, murmurs into the headset he'd forced Tommy to give him. "Top of the Aon. We're making the switch there."
"Nakatomi Tower would be better for this sort of thing," Tommy mutters.
Instead of being whipped with the gun, the speaker in his ear crackles with Remo's laughter. "I was more partial to the second film."
Tommy grips the cyclic a little tighter. "That's the worst thing you've admitted to so far."
It's not. Bombing multiple police stations was bad enough, but one of them was right next to a school. The last thing that came through the comms before Remo's buddies hacked it was the 118 being called to 309 Lucas Ave in Westlake North for fire containment and emergency medical assistance.
He glances at the dashboard. Tucked right above the radar is a little photo he'd printed out at his local CVS on a whim while he was getting a 'Happy 80th birthday, grandma!" card for Sal. It's barely anything: a portrait forced to inhabit a 4x4 square, so the quality is extra shitty. But the man in it is smiling brighter than a sunrise over the ocean, and Tommy's heart gives a pitiful thud just looking at it.
Melton would've shit a brick if he'd known about it. Despite what Hollywood would have the general populace believe, having pictures of loved ones on a pilot's dashboard can be a hell of a distraction. It goes against LAFD regs.
But having spent the last month reacquainting himself with Evan's smile and the wild hope that they could have a future together, it felt right to tack the photo up. He was professional enough that he wouldn't let it get in the way of the job.
He thinks of Evan watching him from the bed this morning, tangled up in sheets that smelled like the both of them. He thinks of the blurred, sleep-damp smile on Evan's face as Tommy hid the evidence of what they got up to the previous night.
"You're covering up a masterpiece," Evan had said, voice a little blurred with sleep. "That's some of my best work."
"Let me guess: if I connect all the hickeys, it's gonna turn into a dolphin or something?"
Evan had thrown back his on the pillow and cackled, and Tommy had thought, We could build a life on this.
Except Evan is pulling tiny bodies out of the ruins of Gratts Elementary, Tommy's got a gun to his head, and Remo's little cell of opportunistic assholes are using the bombings across the city to distract from the 51% blockchain hack they pulled off two hours ago. Tommy doesn't understand crypto for the life of him, but what he got from Harbor's newest probie was something something a blockchain’s distributed ledger was changed and double spending was enabled. At the time, it seemed like a lot of bullshit that boiled down to "they now control the invisible internet money conveyor belt," but at least 200 people are dead, and according to Remo, there are still 70 bombs wired and ready to explode on his say-so.
Unless Tommy flies him and his weird, silent friend to the Aon, where someone's going to be waiting to whisk them away to all points nowhere. Tommy knows exactly how this is going to shake out: the second he lands the bird, Remo's going to bury a bullet in Tommy's brain before disappearing into the wind, leaving the world in shambles. But it won't be enough. Remo will get bored before long—the smart, psychotic ones always do—and then pop back up at some point to do even worse if he has the opportunity.
Ten years from now, they'll make a documentary series about all this. Evan will watch it, because he's contractually obligated to seek out things that will hurt him for some reason, and it'll probably be like cutting open a just-healed wound. He'll spiral until Maddie or one of the others forces him to stop. The series will be called something stupid, like Finding Remo.
That is, of course, if Remo has the opportunity.
Swallowing, throat clicking, Tommy glances at the photo on the dashboard. Evan beams at him from where he's posing like the dorkiest Greek god in the pantheon on top of a boulder somewhere on the Temescal Canyon Trail. That had been a good day. It seemed like the start of a lifetime of them.
He looks away and out the windshield where, up ahead, the Aon stands tall against the sky. But standing taller, and closer, is Library Tower.
Exhaling, Tommy keeps his eyes straight. "Listen, you can put the gun away. It's not the threat you think it is."
"No?" Remo presses the glock harder against the back of Tommy's head, and Tommy stifles a wince. "You think I won't shoot you?"
"Oh, I know you're gonna shoot me," Tommy says, almost cheerfully. He refuses to look any closer at that. "I just don't think you're gonna do it while we're hanging 900 feet above the city."
The pause that follows is probably only a second or two, but it feels like a decade. Finally, the press of metal disappears, and Tommy hears the safety clicking back on.
"You seem pretty calm about all this," Remo says, curiosity making his already light voice positively airy.
Tommy shrugs. "Last year I stole one of these to fly some friends into a category 5 hurricane, then landed it on a capsized cruise ship. This? Doesn't even break a 6.5 on my Crazy Shit-o-meter."
Remo laughs, and Tommy hears the tell tale rustling of the gun being holstered. Thankfully the rotors completely drown out the sound of his heart pounding, which would otherwise be audible from space.
"Let me just say that of all the pilots I could've kidnapped, you're by far the most entertaining."
"Thank you," Tommy says seriously.
Below them, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is lit up for the night's show. They'll be passing the BoA Financial Center, and from there it's only a couple of minutes until their destination.
"Hey, uh, since this does end with me getting shot," Tommy ventures, trying to keep a lid on the massive amounts of adrenaline that are being dumped into his bloodstream. He must be visibly vibrating. "Could I... could I make a call?"
Remo snorts. "Let me guess: 9-1-1?"
Okay, that's kind of funny. Tommy cracks a grin. "Not quite. I have someone... I have someone, and there's something important I need to say."
One of the drawbacks of a helicopter's cockpit is there's no rearview mirror, which would really come in handy right now. He has no idea what Remo's face is doing. He has no idea if he's looking at his silent companion and having some kind of wordless conversation, if Remo is the kind of guy who would grant the last wish of someone he's using.
Finally, after what feels like years, Remo says, "You get ten seconds. You'd better make them count."
He's done more with less. "That's fair. But I'm either going to need you to call it for me or let me hook into an open line."
The air inside the helicopter seems to squeeze inward. "An open line?"
"My... my boyfriend's LAFD." He bites down on the inside of his cheek as they pass the BoA Center on the left, and hopes against all hope that Remo isn't too much of a homophobe to deny the request.
But surprise, surprise. Remo only laughs and says, "How romantic. Urs, get him on an open line to his firefighter boyfriend. It's the least we can do after everything he's done to help us."
Tommy can't see what Urs is doing, but his headset crackles with the familiar static of a live comms line.
"Ten seconds," Remo reminds him. Below them, the roof of Library Tower seems both miles away and impossibly close.
It's all he needs.
"This is LAFD pilot Tom Kinard. Evan Buckley, if you're listening, look in the drawer to the right of the microwave. There's something in there for you." He quietly undoes his harness and kills the engine. "It's yours. It's always been yours."
Just as the AW139 is about to clear the roof of the tower, Tommy shoulders open the door and kicks off into the sky.
The wind is blowing southeast.
+
"N-No, no, no, hey, it's okay, don't fight it, you're okay—hey, I need some help in here! He's waking up! Tommy, they're going to take it out, just wait."
There's a tree trunk growing out of his throat, but trying to move it is impossible, and the effort takes everything out of him. So he gives up, gagging and drifting in and out, then decides to just climb the entire length of the tree to get a look at the view. From there, it's just a matter of finding the wind and floating away with it.
The next time he surfaces, there's something hard over his face, warm and humid, and when the clouds clear from his vision he's able to see two things: Evan's wide-eyed expression of relief, and a giant orange poster board in Lucy's familiar, blocky handwriting that says 2 DAYS SINCE KINARD LAST TAUNTED GOD.
There's a 1 in front of the 2, but it's crossed out.
"Hey!" Evan breathes, and the mattress at Tommy's hip dips a little under his weight. "H-Hey, there you are. Morning! Well, not, uh, morning exactly—it's like 8 o'clock at night—but you're awake!"
"I am." It's muffled by the oxygen mask.
"How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?" Evan leans in, blocking Tommy's view of anything else. He hasn't shaved in a bit, and the hair at his temples looks a little greasy. He's the most gorgeous thing Tommy's ever laid eyes on.
"No pain," Tommy rasps. "M'body's full'f cotton."
Evan smiles a little. "Yeah, they've got you on the good stuff. I can't tell you how many bones you've broken, because it seems like they're still finding them. The doctor did say he'd never seen a pneumothorax quite like yours before, though. He keeps bringing other doctors in to look at your scans. I think a couple of them cancelled their surgeries so they could watch yours yesterday. You're like a celebrity. You've got, like, four tubes in you sucking the excess air out."
For a second, Tommy has no idea what he's talking about. Pneumothorax? How'd he manage that? Lucy's gonna give him shit for the next year.
Then, like a breeze kicking up from the west, it all comes sweeping in. Something starts beeping a little erratically. "Did—did he... he didn't... did... R-Remo...?"
The words are slow and thick, like they have to climb over the broken branches the tree had left behind, but understanding lights up Evan's face almost immediately. He thinks Evan must be holding his hand, because there's pressure on his fingers that feels like it's coming from another room.
"He didn't," Evan says softly, but there's a sparkle of brutal satisfaction in his eyes that Tommy can't look away from. "The helicopter went down like a sack of bricks after you ditched it. It took out the coffee shop in the library. Before you ask: they close at 2:30, so no one had been in there for hours. No one was hurt. Except, well, what's his name."
Tommy closes his eyes and breathes in the canned, almost metallic stuff they're feeding him through the mask. It's so pure, it makes him a little dizzy.
"Good." His sinuses prickle hotly. "Good. That's..."
"Hey, hey, shhh," Evan coos, and Tommy opens his eyes just in time to see Evan press his mouth lushly to the curve of the oxygen mask. Despite whatever they're giving him, Tommy's lips ache with the need to feel that kiss.
"Evan," he whispers.
When he pulls back, Evan's got a wide, almost gleeful grin tugging the corners of his mouth to his ears. He looks like he's about to blow up a Gotham City school bus to try and draw out Batman. Instead, he lifts his left hand.
The lights in the room are low, so the ring on Evan's finger doesn't really glint as brightly as it should, but the light in Evan's eyes is almost blinding.
"Drawer to the right of the microwave, huh?" He laughs a little, like it's bubbling out of him, like he can't stop it. "How long had that been in there?"
It takes a moment for Tommy to pick through the cobwebs in his brain. "Mm... got it... after we did that flight over... hm... Channel Islands."
Evan stares at him, then his bubbly laughter morphs into maniacal cackling.
Tommy glances down at his hands to see if they gave him a button for the pain meds he's on. He's going to dilaudid himself into oblivion.
"That was four months into..." Evan uses their joined hands to wipe away the tears beading on his lashes. "When I asked you to move in, you ran away so fast you left a trail of dust behind you. But you bought an engagement ring four months into dating me?"
"In my defense," Tommy says, suddenly very jealous of Remo for dying a fiery death in the LA Library coffee shop. "I knew... you were it for me. You, on the other hand, had no idea... hm... what you wanted. Asking me... to move in wasn't—it wasn't about me."
Pursing his lips, Evan ducks his head and doesn't deny it, but when he tilts his chin up, the only thing on his face is bare, earnest truth. "I knew I wanted you, Tommy, any way I could have you. I didn't know what that looked like, and not knowing made me... I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to cling when I panic."
Tommy thinks back over the last month—how every time he showed up on Eddie's doorstep, Evan practically threw himself at Tommy, clutching at him like he was afraid Tommy might go back down the walkway and leave; how getting up to take a piss or grab a Gatorade meant leaving the bed, and the look on Evan's face every time was like watching a car crash—and squeezes Evan's hand. He thinks he does, at least.
"Do you... know what it looks like now?" It takes almost all his strength to get the words out. A wave of exhaustion rolls over him, and he pinwheels a little with it. Kicking his way back to the surface takes concentration.
Evan lifts his hand again. The ring fits his finger perfectly. "It looks like you, about to fall asleep."
Another wave bowls him over, and he fights to keep his eyes open. Lucy's stupid poster blurs like someone's upturned a can of Sprite over it.
"I'll be here when you wake up, and so will half the LAPD and a bunch of people from the FBI. You're the hero of the day," Evan murmurs, and Tommy grumbles a little. "But, hey, Tommy. Before you—how did you know? How'd you know I was it for you?"
Even as he's being pulled down into the dark, he looks up, and he sees the surface roiling, dancing with the light of an old sunrise that couldn't hold a candle to the phenomenon of Evan Buckley's smile.
"Found th' wind," Tommy mumbles, drifting down, down, down. "'s easy. Like breathing."
anyways tmi/nsfw warning but since it helped me and my therapist hadnt considered the idea before im willing to bet a lot of others havent either so im gonna share:
if you have vaginismus and struggle with dilating regularly i highly recommend looking into wearable toys. theyre generally vibrators that hook onto your clothes or your person in some way, and they're intended to be worn long-term and in public which means you can safely+comfortably just put it in and go about your day without having to sit down and do the whole production of dilating on its own. theyre usually curved to follow your body and soft/flexible unlike the dilators which are straight and stiff, so theyre imo easier to get in and less uncomfortable to ambiently exist with, and the long term aspect gives your body more time to adjust to having something there. and frankly the vibrator part is helpful too, a big part of vaginismus therapy is teaching your body that sensations there arent actually painful like it thinks so introducing positive stimulus helps it relax, bc functionally it kind of is a type of massage lol. but yeah again i know this is oversharing and tmi but i also know this disorder majorly sucks to have and feel like you cant make progress on so if it helps anyone else then yeehaw
actually ive decided these tags are important enough to go in the post body
image id under cut bc it wouldnt fit in alt
image ID: screenshot of tags reading "#now obviously this is limited to once you hit a point where you can fit the vibrator itself "but once you do this is a speedrunning tactic LMAO #im torn on community labelling this bc on the one hand it is for sure sexually themed but on the other hands its medical advice #advice that i wouldve killed to be able to know as a minor bc i already knew i had it at that point i might add #and something thats p common to learn early on because when you cant fit a tampon in for no reason on your first period #you go 'what why not everyone else can what am i doing wrong' #or well i guess more intense cases like mine are more likely to be discovered early‚ ik for some ppl its more 'tampons are fine but #anything bigger is intense pain' so they dont find out until they lose their virginity #or after if they just assume its supposed to be painful which is p common too #hm yeah i will not be community labelling this and am going to specifically say to any vagina'd minor reading this: if your first time #is intensely intensely painful‚ THAT IS NOT NORMAL no matter what the other person says!! and there are excercises that exist that #can make it easier!!! #and also: forcing your way through the pain will make your condition worse in the long run because it reinforces to your brain #that any interaction down there = pain so the muscles lock down even harder next time #if it hurts really bad and you can do so‚ go to your doctor and ask to be referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist for potential #vaginismus and they should be able to help #you can also research self treatment methods online bc its primarily just dilating‚ kegels‚ abdominal/thigh massages‚ stretches‚ and #bowel health (any tension in neighboring regions will ripple effect back to your pelvic floor so indigestion can make things more difficult) #(hence also the abdominal/inner thigh massages‚ those muscles being tight pulls towards your chest and knees respectively which again increases tension in the pelvic region) #a physical therapist will help you set a timeline and pace yourself as well as assign homework excercises to fit you but #the general stuff that can be found online is helpful regardless #and also remember: any progress is good progress. since my first appointment i have been very bad about doing all my excercises #the amount i should be but ive already made ridiculous progress #oh part of the physical therapy too would be yknow. doctors getting their fingers all up in your business so thats another reason you might #prefer self treatment however personally i can confirm it gets wayyy less awkward after the first one i soend my appointments rambling #about terraria now #youll feel embarassed but dont‚ remember that this is their entire job and youre probably the fifth cooch theyve touched today #so this is just a part of their life‚ its not weird for them #also specifically if anyone is near Spokane i recommend core pelvic physical therapy w julia salazar shes a complete delight". end ID
alao i don't know enough about vaginoplasty to feel comfortable saying whether the first tip would be useful for that dilating too but its something to keep in mind at least, i cant see any reason why it wouldnt work the same though
i dislike "hey rb this actually" type things so if you dont want to thats completely fine esp considering a good chunk of it is abt vibrators lol, however it would be greatly appreciated as vaginismus was never mentioned in school / health class for me and ppl really do end up assuming (or being told by assholes) that the pain is just how it works and they have to push through it to be normal, i learned abt it somewhat early on bc mine was so severe i straight up thought i simply Didnt Have A Vaginal Canal and wanted to see if that was a thing, but for a lot of people its more subtle where penetration is /possible/ just not /comfortable/ so they think "ah this must just be how it works, everyone must experience this when they have sex so i just have to deal with it", which sucks on its own but is also something often taken advantage of/encouraged by abusive partners. or those with low/no libido* often find out when they reach the age for their first pap smear and either are in way more pain than normal for it, or are just straight up unable to complete it and then have to wait until after therapy finishes to get that test, so i want to give anyone i can a head start on that realization lol. and even medical stuff aside, the mental impact of not being able to engage in sex the "normal" way despite wanting to is really rough on its own, it's even been really rough for me and i'm transmasc so to a certain degree ive found it gender affirming not being able to do it """the girl way""", but at a certain point that just became a sprinkles-on-a-turd kind of thing yknow lol
*can also include those with active libidos who just choose not to sleep with anyone, but theyre a bit more likely to find out via masturbation whereas someone without probably won't feel the need to explore what's going on there as much
also i wanted to add vis a vis the physical therapy part, the "having a doctors finger in you" part does feel weird and awkward and embarassing and yes probably will hurt a bit when youre first starting out, but they will go as slow as you need and it really is helpful, because from that they can tell you what areas to focus pressure on with the dilator, test muscle control, make sure youre doing kegels/breathing exercises right, and gauge your progress while making sure youre not pushing too fast, so if youre willing/able to push thru the awkwardness of it then it really is worth it
i know this isn't under this blog's theme at all but i feel like we do dip into general medical stuff a lot, and this is something pretty personally important to me so i wanted to share it here too
oh actually one more thing to add, if you're transmasc go through planned parenthood for your referral if you can, they should be able to find you a trans-friendly location
@excessive-vampires hey of course<3 i know it fuckin sucks to deal with so anything i can do to help others with it ill do my best
with that i saw your reblog earlier and was working through forming a response so i just wanted to say firstly im really sorry youre stuck in that situation and that your doctors treated you like that, secondly im not sure if you wanted advice on working around that so if not feel free to disregard all of this but if yes:
firstly dilators - if the issue is:
> not knowing what to get - i got the intimate rose dilator set off amazon and my physical therapist made happy noises when i showed her so they get two thumbs up, id estimate the smallest one is abt the size of a pencil
> they would open your mail and get angry - see if you have any friends nearby who would be willing to let you ship it to their house and then pick it up in person
> if they found it in your room they would get angry - try to think as far outside the box as you can on hiding spots. like say an old pair of boots buried in your closet or something, what are the chances of them checking somewhere like that yknow?
> worried theyll catch you doing it / no lock on door - i usually wait until my housemates are entirely gone or 100% certainly asleep before dilating, its not a noisy activity on its own you go really slow. and even if that means you can only do it once a month, thats ok, like i said any progress is good progress. when i first started out working on it p young i literally couldnt fit much of anything at all and would just occasionally toe the line like every few months, and even that slowly got me to the point where i think shortly after graduating highschool when i ordered the dilators i was able to do the first size after like a week
if none of those solve it and dilatings not a possibility thats def unfortunate but not the end of the road. as for the rest of the exercises none of them involve material stuff so they should be pretty easy to do discreetly if you want (except the massage thing but theyd have no reason to suspect its pelvis involved as the tools used are used for regular massages too lol, and failing that you can still do it with your hands its just not as ideal). so with that here's a rough breakdown of the exercises im supposed to do, and again this is just the general stuff so i cant tell you how many days a week you would do these. and also disclaimer that i very much am not a medical professional, just regurgitating what i remember of the instructions from my doctor. anyways!
kegels:
breathe in through nose 2 seconds, out through pursed lips 2 seconds while squeezing, release and repeat 5 times
then
take slow steady breaths drawing them down into your stomach rather than your chest, do these continuously independent of kegels. pattern is squeeze for 5 seconds, release 10 seconds, and repeat that 5 times
do one set of each of these standing, sitting, and laying down flat on your back with pillows under your knees to elevate your pelvis. originally i was supposed to do all of that eight to ten times a day but that rapidly evolved to "whenever i can remember to in whatever position i happen to be in right now" lol
the abdominal/inner thigh massages are primarily intended as a cupping exercise but you can also use a Gua Sha tool if the cups hurt (like me, they pull my stomach hair so i got one also off amazon, its the shiny metal rock shaped like a paint pallette. for the cups this one looks closest to what she had and you just squeeze it then place on your skin so it creates a seal, release the bulb to create suction, and then slide it around as described below), or she told me the thigh part can also be done with a massage gun. but essentially you just make sweeping motions around your abdominal region, if you start at the bottom on one side you sweep up around your bellybutton on that side to the top and vice versa, if you imagine your stomach in quadrants you wanna spend abt 3 mins going over each corner. then you also wanna do the cardinal directions and just sweep from the outside towards your bellybutton, also 3 mins each (i do not do these in any particular order truth be told im truly just rubbing a slimy rock around on my stomach lol). inner thighs are similar, you just sweep up towards your pelvis. and use massage oil/lotion/something otherwise itll get uncomfortable and chafey, ESPECIALLY the silicon cups my skin hurts just thinking abt that lol
for stretches she told me -
1 minute daily: priformis figure 4 stretch, deep squat stretch, half kneeling hip flexor side bending stretch, supine hamstring stretch with strap, happy baby pose, and adductor butterfly stretch
10x pushup-y things daily: prone on elbows stretch
i googled all of those real quick to make sure those keywords lead to diagrams or guides that looked mostly right so those should be a p good rough guide
the breathing exercises are just more of the stomach breathing thing, you lay down with one hand on your stomach and one on your chest and just concentrate on taking deep breaths without the chest hand moving for a couple minutes
if you had to pick just one of these though i would primarily go for the kegels, for the first month that was the only thing i remembered to do every now and then and id still made a fuckload of progress by the second appointment, theyre entirely undetectable by anyone around you so you can do them whenever and wherever you want, and as far as i know theres not really any way to do them wrong or like. overdo them? worst thatll happen is youll get too tired to keep doing them and the result will be ... you relaxing, so thats also a win lol
another tip is if you cant get dilators but still want to go that route and can fit your pinky: put it in until it starts to hurt and no further, even if thats only a single centimeter and just chill there until it relaxes, focusing on deep breaths and releasing tension in the area (also make sure youve gone to the bathroom prior so you wont get scared of relaxing too much and tense up bc that can hurt a lot w something in you if youre not prepared). itll feel like it never will but i promise eventually it will chill, even if that time is another day youll still have made progress. if you do get it relaxed though then you can try for a little deeper, again stopping as soon as it hurts and waiting for it to adjust. one thing that can help is directing sustained pressure down towards the bottom of your pelvic floor, it will hurt some but in a different way like a really intense backbreaking massage does, and as such will also steadily drive the tension out. vaginismus is lowkey your pelvic floor being one big muscle knot anyways so yknow lol. also if its not going well dont force yourself to continue forever, like give yourself a 15 minute timer as a goal but allow yourself to tap out whenever you need. and conversely if you make it to 15 mins and find youre still feeling fine you can choose to bump that up, the world is your oyster
for bowel health she recommended i get a magnesium supplement, the brand she recc'd is CALM specifically the raspberry lemon flavor, you just mix i think a teaspoon of it with however much warm water you want so if you dont like the taste you can just take it as a shot like i do, or she said adding it to tea and stuff is fine too, and you just drink that before bed every night. its not prescription or anything you can get it at costco or again amazon (all of these companies certainly have their own websites you can order direct from but i am broke as fuck so we do what we can lol)
that's all i can think of right now, make sure to use way more lube than you think you should, and i hope this helps and that your situation looks up soon💜
bringing this back again in honor of a) me finishing my physical therapy a couple months ago 🎉🎉🎉 and b) me finding out that i did not find out about mine by myself! someone sent me an ask in i think 2016 telling me about it after i made a post talking about how i was worried something was wrong! so it makes me sososo happy this post has also done that for others ;0;
Gerard Way, made-up in sclera contact lenses and fake blood streaks, shares the sentiment 'i only have eyes for you' in honor of his 15 year wedding anniversary (9/2/22) +
blessing your feed with the bucktommy first kiss scene, minus the background music.
disclaimer: the scene you’re about to watch is so intimate you might feel like you shouldn’t be seeing it. proceed with caution. you're watching at your own risk.
People who selected the first 2 options please put in the tags whats the most famous lake or ocean you've swam in.Please reblog i want a bigger survey size
gracieabrams
stormborns
origamiaround
amandla
2087
dailybridgerton
