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softquietsteadylove · 28 days ago

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Hello love, how are you?

I know you have done a couple of this already, but may i ask for one where Thena is suffering because of her period and Gil is being a good boyfriend and taking care of her, pretty please.

Also thank you for all your works they are amazing 🩷🤍.

"Thena?"

He didn't get any response as he cracked the door open even further. Which, he wouldn't under any normal circumstance. But not only was this bathroom at an end of the school that no one ever used, he had gotten an inside tip.

"Babe, I know you're in here," he broached carefully. She wasn't in here for no reason.

"Get out."

There she was. But it didn't have her usual sharpness. Plenty of acerbic distaste, certainly, but it had a kind of morose undertone to it.

Gil pressed the door closed behind him, "come on, sweetheart. Sersi sent me."

There was a stall door between them, but he could hear the look of betrayal on her face. "That little-"

"Hey," he assuaged, pressing his palm to the painted steel. "She's at the mall with Dane--who I know damn well you wouldn't want knowing about this, too."

"Whom," she corrected him, although even that lacked her usual gusto. "And that doesn't mean you were the acceptable alternative."

"Thena," he attempted in a sweeter voice. He looked down at the feet under the stall's gap. He had some sympathy; he didn't think of it as nearly so big a deal, but there were probably few things more personal to a girl than this. "Is it bad?"

She took her sweet time answering him, and even when she did, it came out as a miserable little warble. "I can see it a little."

A little would be enough. Especially if she was wearing white jeans.

"Do you know when it started?" he asked, in he thought was a pretty calm and cool way--logical, as his girlfriend would most appreciate.

She sighed (heavily). "After, or maybe even during practice. I managed to slip away from the team."

Gil frowned. Wasn't it, like, girl code not to leave one of their own in this state of distress? "You didn't wanna ask one of them-"

"I wouldn't say I'm that close with any of them," Thena spat. He didn't think she had any real dislike for them, either. But then again, his girlfriend didn't excel at vulnerability, and maybe this was too much for her to even turn to her fellow woman.

She had texted Sersi in blind hopes that her sister was close at hand.

"Okay, here," Gil sighed, pulling up the bag he had with him. He looked up, and then down, "do these doors have hooks on the inside?"

"You think our school has the luxury of something like that?"

Okay, yeah, she had a point. He huffed, "well, I dunno, so you don't have to put your bag or purse or whatever on the floor?"

"I'm not saying it's not a good idea, Gil, but no, they don't have that."

She really was feeling like absolute shit.

"Okay," he gave in easily. He set the bag on the ground and used his foot to slide it in to her. She did snatch it away from his gaze eagerly. "Sersi didn't say which one you liked, so I got a little pack of both, and-"

"Thank you--out."

He sighed again, but there wasn't much more he could do for her at this point. "Okay, okay, but I'm gonna be right outside the door."

"You don't have to, Gil."

He made a face at the stall door again, not that she could appreciate it. "I'm not gonna leave you like this."

"You could, though."

He didn't even really have anything he could compare it to--what she must be feeling at the moment. And for someone who struggled to talk about her own discomfort like she did... "I'm sorry, Thena."

It was so, so quiet. But he caught it--the little sniffle. The telltale sign that her misery was not just mere anger or frustration.

"There's no need, Gil," she tried to dissuade him again, more genuinely and less angrily this time.

"Babe, you know I've eaten you out, right," he commented rather dryly, "it's not like I can get freaked out by your period."

"That's-!" For however strong it started, it gave way to her misery not a second later, finishing in a whimper, "different."

She was right, it was different. But he was trying! He just wanted to make her feel better.

"I'll be outside," he reaffirmed to her door, pressing himself to it as if she would know he was trying to comfort her like that. "And I'm not leaving without you, so don't even try it."

"Fine."

Gil pulled himself away from the door slowly. He lingered, in case she was going to change her mind and tell him to stay. But she made not even a sound, which wasn't even that easy to do with the crinkly plastic pharmacy bag he'd brought in.

He had even had the wherewithal to ask them to double bag it, for privacy reasons! He thought that was a pretty smart move, on his part. He had gotten both tampons and pads, which maybe was a little overkill. But he didn't want her to get stuck with one if she was more comfortable with the other. And he'd thrown in some pain meds and some chocolate, just for good measure.

Gil leaned against the wall outside the bathroom door. They were at the very end of the hall, by the door that led straight to the fields. Now that all the practices were over, no one would be down here until teachers left or cleaning staff came to do their thing.

His heart ached for his poor Thena, imagining her discovering the blood and too uncomfortable around her teammates to ask for help with it. He wasn't entirely sure where her ire with them started, or if it was for Thena reasons or something else. But the fact that she had slipped away from them to endure the misery for herself spoke to how solitary a creature she really was.

He stood up straight as the door opened and Thena emerged with the bag in the crook of her elbow. She was staring straight down at the ground. "How do you feel?"

"Humiliated."

Gil smiled down at the top of her head as she headbutted him right in the chest. He didn't mind. He wrapped his arms around her, pressing a kiss to her hair.

His first instinct was to say something to lighten her mood, maybe a joke or something. But he felt the faint but real little spots of warmth in the cotton of his t-shirt. He rubbed her back, "it's okay."

Thena had never, ever, cried in front of him. Not even when she told him about Ikaris laughing at her for being a virgin. He was still determined to kick that guy's ass one day.

She pulled away, rubbing her eyes to erase the last of her woes for herself. "Thank you."

"Of course," he frowned. Like he was doing some great thing by helping her out with this? It was pretty basic boyfriend stuff, he was pretty sure. "You know I mean that, right?"

"I know," she grumbled, and there was some of his Thena starting to emerge. She stepped away from him, her arms wrapped around herself.

"You want me to, uh," he tilted his head, "check if you're good?"

"I would rather die."

He chuckled; now that was his Thena.

"Just," she mumbled out, embarrassment written all over her. "Give me your sweater.

He did so in an instant, pulling his black hoodie off his shoulders and wrapping it around her. She extended her arms on her own, threading them through the sleeves smoothly. He made sure it sat on her shoulders and then gave the bottom a tug to verify that it did indeed cover well beyond her (cute) butt.

She looked at him as she started pushing the sleeves up.

"Lookin' good," he grinned at her with a wink.

She rolled her eyes at him, but the way she let him take her hand told him she was still feeling a little shitty about everything. "Take me home?"

"You got it," he assured as gently as he could. As much as he wanted to offer to take her out and do something fun, it wasn't about what he wanted. And if she wanted to wallow in her misery for the night he would ask and beg and plead to join her in that misery. "You know-"

Thena didn't even turn her head, just gave him one hell of a side eye.

But he smiled, braving on for the love of his young life. "As I keep reminding you, I am in this for real, babe. Like, real deal, long haul-"

"Yes, yes, you have said," she sighed, although he could see her starting to smile again.

He gave her hand a squeeze. "It's not like I was never gonna be around for...something like this."

It showed on Thena's face just how much she appreciated his delicacy with it, even after the fact.

"It's not a big deal--not to me, at least," he shrugged, hoping he was saying the right thing. All he could hope was that she was really hearing him and getting how much he meant it. "And if you ever needed help like this again--just call me, okay? Text me, email me if you have to."

She laughed at the suggestion, but all he needed to see was that cute smile, showing off her teeth. She had a cute laugh, too.

"I'll be there, Thena," he finished, pouring his heart into it. "In a heartbeat."

"I know, Gil." Well, that was the end of that. It wasn't up for discussion anymore, and he would be pushing his luck to try and continue it.

But he happily let her release his hand, only so she could wrap her arms around his one and press her face into his t-shirt sleeve. "You gonna let me carry that bag for you?"

"No."

"Okay, fine," he chuckled. Whatever she wanted--needed. Anything at all. He looked down at her as they continued down the hall, taking their good, sweet time. "Thena, I-"

"I hope," she prefaced, giving his arm an extra squeeze, "you're not about to say something I wouldn't want to hear on arguably the worst day of my life."

Okay, so not the time for an I-Love-You. Their first, he had to keep reminding himself, no matter how many times he had already imagined saying it to her.

"Yeah, no, totally," he mumbled, resigning himself to keeping it in again.

"Just-" Thena pressed herself even closer to him. "Just wait a little longer."

He looked down at the top of her head again (since she wasn't up to looking at him yet, apparently). But she didn't have to ask; he was going to wait for her until the day he died, he had already decided.

It wasn't even really up to him. Somewhere along the way, he had fallen beyond the point of no return, and he would do anything - literally anything! - for her.

Thena let him kiss her forehead as they continued shuffling along, the hum of the fluorescents and the crinkling of the bag offering a soundtrack to their quiet moment.

"Y'know, I heard baths are good for cramps. We could-"

"Not a chance, Gil."

#Thenamesh 10 Things AU #thank you for the ask sweetheart!!!!#I'll never tire of writing some good ol' period comfort although this is maybe a different kind of comfort #I hope you don't mind my choice of AU #I have imagined something kind of like this before #I mean Thena's usual choice of wardrobe and everything #and she doesn't trust her teammates enough not to blab about it around the wrong people #so she just slips away quietly #texts Sersi to please for the love of god bring her SOMETHING #but Sersi can't just slip away #and she knows asking Dane to take her to the pharmacy and then back to the school is also not an option #but a very sweet someone gets a text that Thena needs help #and he goes my ladylove needs me #unfortunately I think many of us have experienced something at least like this #Thena is mortified even as the nearly grown woman she is #it's not something she wanted him being involved in!#at least not at this point in their lives #but Gil thinks it's a given because obviously they're gonna move in and get married someday #of course he was gonna deal with her period eventually #Gil takes her home and she lets him come in #she goes upstairs and gets changed and does what she needs to do #he asks if she wants to just stay in and cuddle and she says fine whatever if you want to #but when they're upstairs in her bed she's clinging to him like a koala #she really did have a miserable day but it wouldn't be like her to admit that she does feel better having him there #although she asks they never speak of this again #Gil holds her until he hears the front door #Thena is asleep but he kisses her goodnight and slips out her window #in case her dad is the barging in type #not that that is not also problematic #but it's just Sersi checking on her big sister like a sweetheart

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batsplat · 10 months ago

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jorge martin is just an off-brand motogp version of george russell. both incredible qualifiers, hard racers, have issues sometimes keeping their tyres together, have stayed in a satellite/backmarker team for three years begging the big manufacturer to accept them into the main fold and will randomly decide that they are actually done with race by beefing it into the gravel/walls on the last laps.

this is why ducati did not hire martin, he hasn’t done the power point presentation

strong last line but hm... do I agree with this...

I don't entirely disagree with the profile of racer, though jorge's a bit more in the flame bright and early mould (partly also just because of the different rhythms of those two racing series). he cut his teeth not just on being an exceptional qualifier but also a starter. even though this year, you do kinda have to say pecco's just?? uh?? he's never been a BAD starter but I swear he didn't used to be this good? some of his starts from the second or third row this year have been genuine works of art. this isn't relevant, just needed to mention it. that's part of why jorge does so well at sprints... he's really good at that abbreviated format, where it's just all out from the very start. mr russell was considered quite a poor starter in his williams days (though lbr that may have partly been car characteristics) - the qualifying's very strong and very consistent, but for a while the question was of capitalising off the line. he's got a few more drives that are about working his way through the field... like qatar last year. I just don't really associate jorge with that?

the bottling thing is debatable and we could get into that debate, but like, never mind that. we're leaving sports analysis now and getting back into vibes territory. the thing about jorge is that he has had a competitive bike from the word go. mr russell, whatever you think about how clutch he is or isn't, did not set a foot wrong in terms of making the mercedes case for himself. what happened with him was basically just... a series of unfortunate events that got him stuck in a spectacularly uncompetitive car for three years. got one shot in a good car in said three years (sakhir 2020) and delivered the perfect performance. but jorge!! jorge had 2022!! he blew it!! he did get unlucky with the gp22 vs the gp21 comparison early that season and how bastianini was able to take advantage of the early stage factory spec malaise, and he's far from the only gp22 who was struggling early on (cf one 'pecco bagnaia'). but still, some of his rides that year were. truly horrendous. and the way the whole thing played out left him with a massive chip on the shoulder.... that's the thing, right, I think what's so key about jorge is that sense of grievance, the fact that he was rejected for that factory seat and we're now several years on from that. and it's a really thin line between that being a good thing and a bad thing. like, anything that's a potential source of motivation fundamentally can be helpful, right? in 2007, casey showed up at ducati as not their first choice, kinda a stopgap, and also after yamaha had pulled the plug on a potential contract not once but twice. he has spoken again and again how yamaha and honda's behaviour towards him made him want to show them exactly what they were missing out on. he used that! it was good for him as a competitor that he had something to get worked up over! he's done it throughout his career! but on the flip side, if you're so busy feeling victimised that you're kind of already... primed for failure, then you've got a problem. like, if the takeaway is you're probably screwed anyway because you're being sabotaged by the factory, then even if that were true you're fucked before you start competing. you've already lost in your own head, you've made excuses before you've even started. it's a thin line! thinking the world is out to get you can either be a good way to get yourself to going, or it can be a loser mindset

quickly circling back to georgie boy, my main feeling is that they kinda have a different type of malaise. one is an overthinker and the other is at times very much an under-thinker. grussy actually shares the overthinking trait with his fellow 63 more than anyone else... all three kinda have this fun meeting point of a lot of cockiness and a lot of insecurity - they just balance them in other ways. and russell reminds me more of pecco in that kind of... being constantly thrown up against a Big Legacy of someone you admire, being in the shadow of greats and having to make your own name... you're very much part of a succession plan that leaves you with massive shoes to fill... (though admittedly grussy has also gone through the unenviable experience of getting to work closely with his hero and eventually having most of said hero's fans absolutely despise him. can happen, I suppose.) jorge is a bit more baggage-free. he's very much the main character in his own story, not so much faffing about with the narrative implications of all this shit. more straightforward! if jorge wins, it's about him. if he loses, it's also about him. ducati has been his world for the past few years, to the point where he's gotten a bit parochial about the whole thing. early this season, he was talking like - sure, the championship lead is important, BUT this is also giving him power in contract negotiations!! which... yes, that's true, but also that should be way down the order of priorities my man. jorge martin might be the only person in this universe who... genuinely might be more obsessed with beating pecco than marc? like, beating the marc marquez would be great and all, 8x world champion bla bla, but pecco is his personal antagonist! he's known him for years! that's ducati's golden boy! he needs to beat pecco so badly! there's something really fun about a rivalry where it feels like at least one side's feelings towards the other... kinda go beyond a personal relationship, like at a certain point it becomes about what the other guy Represents. jorge isn't worried about legacy and the shoes he's got to fill and can he truly live up to all those expectations as much as he's worried about himself and also occasionally pecco bagnaia

anyway, I've been thinking about the bottling thing... what jorge said about it earlier's been rattling around in my head since I saw the quote

man, it must be really tough, right? like, you don't know why it's happening... it's not just cockiness - though there is an element of someone who's kinda used to bulldozing his way through problems with sheer obstinacy and stubborn self belief (another distinction with the 63's, who are more introspective and prone to self-flagellation following mistakes). but it's also just... you can't figure out why it's such a fundamental shortcoming of your game! today, from the way pecco and also luca (apparently) were talking about it, it seems like there was something noticeable about how jorge was gradually losing a bit in his control and precision as a result of how the tyres were going off, as a sort of precursor of the fatal error. which... well, it's at least a somewhat understandable mistake, because it comes from pressure? it's not just the tyres going off each time - the mugello sprint crash was lap four, jerez was lap ten. but an interesting thing about his big errors this year is that they have all come as a result of serious pressure - as a result of pecco directly behind him in the case of jerez and sachsenring and like... in anticipation of the massive points damage he knew he was probably going to take in mugello. it sounds obvious to say pressure is more likely to generate mistakes, but of course that's not always true of our title contenders! pecco only really wakes up when he's already dug a hole halfway to the centre of the earth - but when he faces actual pressure, his track record is mostly very strong. his biggest howlers this season, portimao + catalunya sprints, both came when he was leading comfortably. martin has also made these pressure-light mistakes in the past, most memorably indonesia last year but... well

one of the most fascinating bits of sports are like... limits and ceilings and how your build-up as an athlete kinda determines what's possible for you. like, sports is sort of where you experiment with notions of fate and inevitability and all that, where you question whether it's possible for anyone to ever really change. is it once a choker, always a choker? if you know that you have this problem, this flaw that is always just there in the background, waiting to be actualised - what can you do? does it give you more or less hope that there's not a clear root cause? how debilitating that must be for confidence too, always knowing that you could cause everything you've worked for to crash down in a moment.... this is where. y'know, the thing with pecco, right, is that he's now gotten to a weird place where psychologically he has to be wary of the mistakes he himself makes - but he knows that he can also bounce back from them. he has that muscle memory, because he's done it before. he chucked it down the road in india and he won the title! jorge did it in thailand and he didn't! and the problem is that it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle of sorts, because even though the margin between the two of them at the end of last year ended up being relatively slim... one of them still won and one of them still lost. which actually means that even though pecco and jorge both have made serious mistakes this year (though pecco's track record is cleaner - in portimao the points punishment didn't quite fit the crime and in the jerez/le mans sprints he was kinda just unlucky), only one of them knows they can do this shit and win the title anyway

and now jorge has an entire summer break to go away and think about that. can be a good thing, get some distance, and it's easy to slip into a run of bad form that you can't escape if there's no interruption. can be an awful thing because you're sitting with your mistakes for weeks on end with no chance to rectify them. I'm naturally a pessimist on the 'can any athlete ever really change' question because life has very much worn me down on this topic over the last few years (aka some sports results made me really sad). but I always want to be optimistic! I want to believe athletes can fix their fatal flaws! I want to believe they can get better at managing their tyres and not folding under pressure. and pressure works weirdly... sometimes it's not really a test of 'mental strength' as much as it is of what kind of in-built margin an athlete has (btw this is my best guess for what goes wrong with martin). sometimes it's beneficial in sharpening the mind and erasing the possibility of you just... not being sufficiently concentrated (which is my best guess for what happens with pecco when he's not being pressured). can you truly get better at dealing with that? or at a certain point, have you already accumulated so much mental scar tissue that you're always going to get in your own way? who knows! maybe we're all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past forever and ever. who knows

anyway. in response to this ask. I do think it's more a case of 63's aligned in being too stuck in their own head, too concerned with legacy, and walking a very thin line between arrogance and insecurity. all three of them, though, have a bad case of 'coming through the ranks in an era of greats they'll always be disparagingly compared to'. what's new can never be as good as what came before, right? and they're constantly struggling to manage or maybe even overcome basic flaws that seem to be embedded in their make up as competitors... maybe they'll make it, just a little. maybe they never will. but it sure is fun to watch them try!

#bloody hell anon he had a mechanical dnf at his home race give him a moment #real talk he's george lawrence #the unbearable agony of not QUITE being able to come across as authentically yourself... sure you want to win but you also want to be loved #but. BUT. when it comes down to it. you'd always take the winning over being loved #revered teammate with an.... enthusiastic fanbase be damned #and eventually you will be able to make the team your own when the legend goes off to the red flop team #//#brr brr #batsplat responds #also I resent the notion we have the off brand version of eff won's anything!! our freaks are all 100% organically grown I'll have you know #can't believe I posted before this weekend going 'well I hope they don't prove me wrong about this serious title fight business' ffs #sachsenring last year is arguably still their best duel I REALLY felt like we might be building to that but OH NO #I feel hugely defensive of that rivalry and their stupid fucking title fights but some days they do NOT make it easy on me istg #I STILL think it's a bit unfair to them that they're being given twice as many chances to chuck it down the road #but like... can we please try to do our title fight momentum shifts on track and not in the gravel...#remember le mans... don't you want to do another le mans... please do another le mans... even a catalunya... come on... please #//currt

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