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motosona · 24 days ago

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Blessed be the mystery of love

On Ao3

There was no denying that Valentina was a creature of habit; she would stumble into the kitchen around the same time every morning, bleary-eyed and half asleep still, before making herself a sickeningly sweet cup of coffee and slowly coming back to life. The entire time that Sete had been staying with Valentina, the other woman had never done anything before making coffee, which is why it was so confusing when Valentina collapsed onto a barstool instead of starting to rummage through her coffee stash. Sete's worry only mounted when she noticed that Valentina was hissing in pain under her breath. TDLR: Sete takes care of Valentina during her period, they're in the Ibiza house, and there's lesbian overtones to all of it

Sete watched as the blades of the ceiling fan in the guest bedroom of Valentina’s Ibiza house spun around and around in an endless circle. The summer heat brought a pleasant sort of languidness with it, everything too hot to think too hard about anything. Oddly enough, the idleness felt more luxurious than all of the glitz and the glamour that she had been exposed to over the years.

She knew that the calm wouldn’t feel nice for long. Soon, she would again start craving the addictive rush of adrenaline that racing brought her and again her life would go back to motorcycles and questionable hotel rooms. But for now, she let herself indulge herself in the saccharine sweetness of the summer just for a little while longer.

There was no reason for her to actually get up for a while longer. After all, the only other person in the house with Sete was probably still fast asleep—she had learned soon after she had first arrived at the house that Valentina liked to start her days late and end them late. The part of Sete that was more of the disciplined athlete balked at it but it was but they were in Ibiza and if Ibiza was meant for anything it would be baseless pleasures.

Regrettably, she had pulled herself out of bed around noon and half-heartedly neatened herself up before making her way to the kitchen. Neither she or Valentina were any good at cooking anything more difficult than pasta, but they had cobbled together an odd dynamic where Valentina would make them eggs and toast in the mornings when she woke up and Sete would wash the dishes afterwards. Sete tried not to think about how absurdly domestic it was.

The entire time that Sete had been staying with Valentina, the other woman had never done anything before making coffee, which is why it was so confusing when Valentina collapsed onto a barstool instead of starting to rummage through her coffee stash. Sete watched her for a second, lips pursed and brows furrowed, when she noticed that Valentina was hissing in pain under her breath.

Making her way to Valentina’s side, Sete gently pulled Valentina’s face up to look at her. A jolt of panic went through her when she saw Valentina’s face screwed up in pain, but she pushed it to the side and tried to summon the focus that she had during races, forcing herself to calm down.

“What happened?” Sete asked, not letting go of Valentina’s face and ever so gently brushing her thumb against Valentina’s cheek. She wasn’t Valentina Rossi, but she knew how to deal with people.

“I’m—I’m on my period,” Valentina said, uncharacteristically awkward, and Sete hummed under her breath, trying to get Valentina to keep going. “So, my periods, they aren’t very, er, regular. They just happen sometimes and are very intense .”

“Oh,” Sete said, then, with a pause, she said, “Okay then, come with me.”

Valentina gave her a confused look. “Why?”

“You said that your period was bad, I’m going to help you,” Sete shrugged as if it was evident. After all, if her period was irregular as she said, then there was a good chance Valentina didn’t know how to deal with it and Sete kind of knew what she was doing after going most of her life without the fancy birth control they had her on during the season to stop her period.

“Why?” Valentina asked, somehow even more baffled.

“Because I’m not a monster, and you’re a wreck right now,” Sete replied matter-of-factly.

It was the truth, Valentina’s face had been twisted into a vague grimace the whole and she was shaking slightly from the pain. Sete would feel like shit if she just left Valentina to suffer alone after she had seen Valentina looking like that .

Valentina had shot her a glare at that but worryingly enough had just let Sete drag her by the arm off of her stool and to Sete’s bedroom without any more back-talk. This was definitely out of Sete’s expertise, but Valentina was shaping up to be something of a good friend and Sete tried not to make her friends suffer silently in a corner if she could help it.

When they finally got to Sete’s room, she nudged Valentina over to the bed and fought the blush down when she saw the other woman lying down with her legs dangling off the edge. Her eyes lingered at the sliver of pale skin exposed by the way Valentina had carelessly plopped down and she had to tear her eyes away—this was not the time for her deviances.

Quickly, she turned around and started to rummage through her bag, pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen and a heating pad before she faced Valentina again. Helping Valentina, Sete knew, would be almost like trying to crack a race, the strategy mattered, the set-up mattered, and—most importantly—her approach mattered. The other woman would be running for the hills if Sete came off too strong and would slip away to sulk alone if she was too weak with her advances.

“I forgot to ask, have you taken any ibuprofen yet and do you have your own hot water bottle?” Sete asked, handing Valentina the bottle of ibuprofen. She knew the answer that she’d get to both of the questions already but she just wanted to pretend like Valentina had options here.

“No,” Valentina said bashfully and wasn’t that a sight. Valentina Rossi was uncomfortable , Sete never thought she would see the day. The girl looked far younger than she usually did as she squirmed slightly on the bed like she would like nothing more than to run out the door and never talk about this again.

It was almost like no one had ever just talked to her about this before but that couldn’t be right. Sete could still remember the horribly awkward conversation she had with her mother when she turned eleven and her underwear had been stained with blood for the first time and the various times over the years when girls would tell her about the week-long torture that was their period, surely Valentina had as well.

Mentally, she shrugged it off, Sete wasn’t a shrink and it was none of her business to know about Valentina’s odd hang-ups with talking about her period.

“Well then, take the ibuprofen and I’ll go get the hot water bottle ready,” Sete said, moving to leave the room but Valentina held onto her arm and turned around again.

“But there’s no water here for me to take the pill,” Valentina said confusedly.

“You don’t know how to take pills dry?”

“No? Why would I do that”

“Of course you’ve never taken pills without water, what was I thinking?” Sete sighed before giving Valentina an assessing look. If she was in so much pain, maybe she shouldn’t be walking so much, but then again she would definitely need to take the pill now if she was in pain so they were in a little bit of a conundrum there. Sete huffed and decided to cut her losses, Valentina had always looked feather-light so maybe it was time to see if she really was.

It was absurdly easy to pick up Valentina in a bridal carry. The other woman only let out a yelp of shock, her arms instinctively coming up to clasp behind Sete’s neck. When Sete deemed them stable enough, she started to the kitchen with one very puzzled Valentina Rossi in her arms.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Valentina asked when she seemed to finally get her voice back.

“Carrying you to the kitchen.”

“And why are you doing that?”

Sete let out a huff of annoyance because, well, she didn’t know either really. “Just enjoy the ride, okay?”

“You’re weird,” Valentina muttered before slumping into Sete’s chest. Sete just laughed, hoping that the way her heart was racing would go unnoticed by Valentina, and made her way through the familiar hallways until they were again greeted with the sight of Valentina’s rather sparse kitchen.

She set Valentina down onto the kitchen counter before grabbing a mug that she was pretty sure was clean and filling it up with water. Shoving the mug into Valentina’s hands, she filled a random pan with water and heated it up so the water was hot but not boiling and filled the hot water bottle carefully.

Sete could feel Valentina’s eyes on her the whole time, but she pretended that she wasn’t staring. It was almost like they both knew that they were passing a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Domestic and personal, they had somehow graduated from that pretence of friendship into something that felt like too much and yet just right.

It wasn’t a bad feeling per se, Sete had always found herself looking at women more than she had found herself looking at men. She had brought enough women to her bed to know that they were more of what she wanted anyway, but having feelings for her teammate? That could get messy, but it felt oddly right. A woman who understood the urge to race, who lived, breathed, and loved her sport along with her; it would have been more surprising if Sete hadn’t felt something towards Valentina, honestly.

Even though the revelation settled oddly well over her, Sete knew that Valentina wouldn’t feel the same. The younger woman had always been a curious mixture of hedonistic and ascetic; if she sniffed out any inkling that whatever she had with Sete would hurt her chances of winning, that it was a weakness of any sort, she would snuff any spark as quick as it struck and that was the last thing that Sete wanted.

She didn’t know, necessarily, whether or not she could get Valentina to fall in love with her without the other woman noticing and yet, she couldn’t help but hope. Maybe, she thought as she wrapped the hot water bottle in a clean kitchen towel, maybe they could make it work. Maybe Sete could make it work. If she couldn’t—well then there was no harm in trying.

When she turned around to face Valentina again, the other woman was still watching her with her unnervingly blue eyes as if trying to skin Sete with her eyes, trying to find any malice in Sete’s innocent attempts to help her. Sete held the now kitchen towel-wrapped hot water bottle out to Valentina and it felt like a test. Something that felt like she was saying, “You see it, I see it, will you cross this line with me? Will we change what we have into something else? Can we survive it?”

Valentina eyed the hot water bottle once and then twice before she took it out of Sete’s hand and it felt like something had changed but Sete just couldn’t name it. Change, Sete knew, could both be good and bad, but she didn’t know the extent of the damage that an innocent hot water bottle could and would bring. At that moment, on a beautiful Ibiza day with a very pretty girl blushing bright red for her, it didn’t really matter anyway.

If you had asked her after all of it was said and done—after Valentina had done what could only be described as roughly ripping her out of her story, blackening out her name and throwing her pages in the fire—Sete would have still said that she loved Valentina because it was the truth. One day, when she was old and laden with scars from decades of hurt, she would look back at the day she had handed Valentina that accursed water bottle and realise that she had never truly ever regretted it in the end.

#thr bridal carry 🥲💖💕💕💖💕💕💖💕💖#after decades of hurt she would look back and realize she never truly regretted it in the end OH MY GODDDDD #this is so sweet and gentle and ahh #fic #fem setetino

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