#buying time

[traveledlight]

Self-induced sensory overload,

a ringing in my brain.

My blood burns hot,

making deals with the devil just to make it stop.

But I’ll do it again

for moments to breathe—

just to fall

into the cycle

once again.

[tortoisesshells]

#7 for Nellie but also for Norrington (even though this ask is technically an OC meme) because he has for sure thought about it. Either in your canon-verse Customs and Duties or the modern AU one.

SO. I failed at writing a playlist. But I did write a one-off about Modern AU Nellie and Sam/Samuel talking about what to play at his funeral, which covers some possible suggestions for songs at a funeral. Sam isn’t taking it seriously.

Aunt B had taken the kids with her and Uncle Bendish to New York City for the day, to see the Museum of Natural History and the holiday displays at Macy’s and go skating in Rockefeller Center; that gave Nellie time to help Sam to the couch and put a series of corny holiday movies on in the background –

And to catch up on her laundry. Who knew that having two children on the town swim-team would mean washing, somehow, thirty towels a week? Her marriage, apparently, was temporary, but the kingdom of Maytag and Whirlpool was forever.

Under the cut, for some blunt references to cancer, and Nellie’s foul-languaged internal monologue.

It was a good day; there hadn’t been many of those of late. Sam’s nausea subsided early and easily, and he’d choked down some toast and been thoroughly delighted by the tackiest fleece hat (shaped like a lobster, a fucking lobster, she was going to murder John for sending that except that Sam was part of the majority of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma that were going to die within a year and they were paying through the fucking nose for the privilege of him just dying a little more fucking slowly, so Polly and Sam Jr. could have one more Christmas with their Dad – so where the fuck was the money to fly to Nassau to smack her brother upside the head going to come from?) he’d ever seen. Aunt B had taken the kids with her and Uncle Bendish to New York City for the day, to see the Museum of Natural History and the holiday displays at Macy’s and go skating in Rockefeller Center; that gave Nellie time to help Sam to the couch and put a series of corny holiday movies on in the background –

And to catch up on her laundry. Who knew that having two children on the town swim-team would mean washing, somehow, thirty towels a week? Her marriage, apparently, was temporary, but the kingdom of Maytag and Whirlpool was forever.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Sam, when she came back to the living room with another basket of towels under her arm, playing keep-away from Hotspurr, who was hellbent on getting his fuzzy little butt in the Basket of Warm.

“About,” Nellie squinted at the screen, “Shirley Temple?”

“No. I can’t stand grenadine syrup.”

“Sam.”

Her husband laughed – weakly, but still maybe seventy percent as big as it had been at that party twelve years ago – and held out his hand to her. “About music. ‘I’ll be Seeing You.’ “

Fuck.

The bottom dropped out of Nellie’s stomach, and she faked a sneeze to stick her face in some knock-off Kleenex until she was sure she wasn’t crying. “At a funeral, that sounds vaguely threatening, darling. I can’t guarantee my jackass brother –”

“Which one?” asked Sam, shaking his head from side to side so the red fleece claws of his new lobster hat bobbed. She mentally cursed John again, though pretty toothlessly.

“Peter. I can’t guarantee Peter won’t try to stake you with a song like that.”

“That would be dinner and a show. You think he’d like ‘Highway to Hell’ better?”

“He’d certainly feel more self-righteous afterwards,” Nellie replied, chewing her lip, “John will laugh. I don’t think – I don’t think Polly and Sam will get it.”

“Polly’s ten, and Sam was born thirty. They’ll get it, Nell.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Amazing Grace’?”

“If you promise me the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious pipe band you can find, you can have them play ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ for all I care. Here – give me some of those towels. I’m good for a few of ‘em.”

She passed off exactly two, and sat with the Moana one spread out across her lap, watching teenage Shirley Temple defend her holiday party dress to her horrified parents as a morale-booster for her GI date; it was hard to think of her as the same little kid chirping ‘Animal Crackers’ while she was looking at the equally young soldier like ‘Sixty Minute Man’ was stuck on repeat in her head.

There wasn’t anything she was going to want to hear that day. Ruth, her new and aptly-named therapist, had suggested that something familiar, without any deep meaning to Sam or her marriage would be best; but it seemed too cold to b–

To send him off without something meaningful, wasn’t it? Not just some fucking platitudes about missing him, or him going to his rest, or whatever John Groban made so much money singing about. But then, she’d never want to listen to it again – not after listening on her way to a fucking hole in the ground, even a nice, expensive one in the cemetery by the river, with its looping paths and manicured lawns and old weeping willows. It’d all look nice in the spring, she knew, but at the present rate of progression, he’d be dead before Valentine’s Day.

[onmusicandliterature]

june 8

absolutely in love with this song for the past week or so 

[intelligentchristianlady]

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance

What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time

Very, very long, and very wonky. Also very scary.

Bottom line: stay home!

[stockwellarchives]

[healthymusik]

🕰⏱

[kira-and-kats]

OH HERE WE GO

[lgbtqreads]

Guest Recs From Erin Ptah: Sci-Fi Webcomics With Same-Sex Couples

Guest Recs From Erin Ptah: Sci-Fi Webcomics With Same-Sex Couples

Welcome back to Erin Ptah this #WebcomicWednesday, bringing us Sci-Fi webcomics with same-sex couples! ***** More webcomic recs, because you can never have too many. I was trying to come up with an all-m/m list, but had trouble grouping my favorites into sets of 5 that had any coherent sub-theme. So instead, here’s a mix of m/m and f/f, in a genre I could sit around reccing all day. (As usual, if…

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