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iwasntstable · 3 months ago

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n.s. | if i'm there

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➔𝐢𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐧𝐭𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞➔➔　𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘰 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦!+　　[𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝐀𝐎𝟯]

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I didn't want to believe how much you needed help / And I just left you to be all by yourself / And now I wish I had seen that you weren't doing well / But I just came back to see how hard you fell Well, if I'm there to catch you when you fall / You'll have a friend down in Hell after all 　　— If I'm There - Bad Omens

summary: when things start getting bad, you withdraw. ignoring calls and texts, and descending into bad habits as you self-isolate. but noah knows what you're like and he loves you too much to let you suffer alone.

content tags: angst, emotional hurt/comfort, poor mental health, mentions of disordered eating, discussions of food, self-destructive behaviour, fluff.

word count: 3.8k.

note: having a rough time recently so enjoy the self-indulgent product of my stressing. 　　PS: please tell me if the layout of this post is fucked up so I can fix it for you.

Things are getting bad again. You find your sleep schedule sliding later and later, falling asleep in the early hours of the morning and waking in the afternoon, bypassing the day altogether. Meals are becoming infrequent and poor in quality. Appetite dwindling and opting to eat half a bag of microwave rice at 3am rather than dedicating time to creating a nutritious and satisfying meal. Truth be told, you didn’t have the energy to cook anything more, and the malnutrition itself likely played a part in that lack of energy. The trash was left to build up, and the laundry hadn’t been done in weeks.

The progression of all of this was gradual. So gradual, that by the time you recognised what was happening, it was all but too late to stop the rapid descent into your depression. And as the days go by, you start to withdraw into yourself. Messages from friends begin to go unanswered. You tell yourself you’ll reply later, when you have the mental bandwidth to engage in conversation. But later ends up being not at all. Too many days have passed, and you feel like it’s too late to reply now; you don’t know how. That includes your boyfriend.

　　　　　　　　　　　[Noah 💘]

　　　　　　　　　　　Tuesday 　　　　　　　　　　　10:45AM

— Morning! Do you wanna call later? Miss your voice

morning! I have a headache — right now and I feel like it's not gonna go away :( I'll let you know though. I miss you too ❤️ —

— Aw I'm sorry :( — I hope you feel better soon — Text me later and let me know how you are ❤️

　　　　　　　　　　　02:27PM

— Hey babe how are you feeling?

my head still hurts :( —

— Want me to come over and look after you? — Have you eaten yet?

you don't have to do that, I'd be — shitty company anyway just wanna sleep —

— Okay :( — I'll text you later tonight so you can sleep

　　　　　　　　　　　10:09PM

— How are you feeling? — Are you sleeping? — Hope you’re resting well. Text me when you wake up so I know you’re okay — I love you ❤️ — Goodnight ❤️

　　　　　　　　　　Wednesday 　　　　　　　　　　　08:41AM

— Morning, how’re you feeling?

　　　　　　　　　　　09:13AM

— Are you awake? — Babe, are you okay?

hey! sorry I was still asleep. I feel a — little better but my head still hurts :(

— I’m gonna cancel today and come over — I don’t want you to be alone when you’re not well

no don’t do that, i’m okay really — you know this happens sometimes. I just wanna rest, you don’t have to cancel for me. not when work is important

— You’re important too — Please let me look after you

I love you and I love that — you want to be here for me, but all I want to do right now is sleep

I don’t want you to cancel — important schedules just to watch me sleep all day I’ll feel better soon. just need to give it time. —

— I’d cancel to sit and watch you sleep in a heartbeat — I love you, I just want you to be okay — I have to go, I’ll text you later okay?

I’ll text you back when I can, — if I don’t reply I’m probably asleep so don’t worry have a good day I love you —

　　　　　　　　　　　10:26PM

— Hey babe sorry I didn’t text all day I was so fucking busy — How’re you doing now? — Are you sleeping again?

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 10:31PM]

— Text or call me when you wake up, even if it’s the middle of the night I’ll leave my sound on — I love you ❤️

　　　　　　　　　　Thursday 　　　　　　　　　　　08:41AM

— Hey, are you awake?

　　　　　　　　　　　08:55AM

— Hello??

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 08:59AM]

— Message me when you wake up

　　　　　　　　　　　12:20PM

— Babe?? — I’m worried — Even if you don’t wanna talk can you please let me know you’re okay?

　　　　　　　　　　　12:46PM

— Babe please answer me

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 12:48PM]

　　　　　　　　　　　01:20PM

hey, sorry I missed your messages — I’m okay sorry for worrying you —

— I was just about to come over — I still might — I’m worried about you

please don’t I just don’t — wanna see anyone right now

— Even me?

I’m sorry — I’ll text you tomorrow — — If that’s what you want — I love you

　　　　　　　　　　　Friday 　　　　　　　　　　　03:47PM

— I don’t want to bother you, I’m trying to give you space if that’s what you need — But I’m worried about you — You haven’t messaged me all day — Did I do something wrong?

　　　　　　　　　　　04:10PM

— Babe please answer me

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 04:12PM]

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 04:15PM]

　　　　　　　　　　　04:18PM

— Your friends said they haven’t heard from you in days — What’s going on? You can talk to me. — You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to but text someone back, please — I just wanna know that you’re okay

　　　　　　　[MISSED CALL: 04:23PM]

And that’s how Noah ended up outside your door. Banging incessantly and shouting your name through the wood. You could hear him from where you were wrapped up in bed, but you were half hoping he would just drop it and go away. Realising quickly, however, the futility of that hope when you heard another voice join the sound of his. That of your neighbour, the nosy one from the house on the right.

You groan and throw the blanket off yourself, flinching a little when your feet touch the cold floor. You have no choice but to go downstairs, and no time to change your appearance. Hoping to whatever God will listen that Noah doesn’t make a comment on the clothes you’d been wearing for the past week before you can get in the shower and change.

“I’m just really worried about her,” you can hear the unmistakable tone of Noah’s voice through the door before you even open it.

Hesitating for a moment with your hand on the door handle, you decide to eavesdrop on the conversation. “I haven’t seen her for, ohhh let me think... has to be about a week now,” despite the man’s voice wavering with age, it came loud and clear through the door. An unfortunate side effect of his hearing loss.

“A week?!” Noah exclaimed. Having enough of the old man sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, you unlock the door quickly, wrenching it open and taking a surprised Noah by the arm.

“Oh! Nice to see you, dear. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” The old man sneers.

“Yeah, nice seeing you, Trevor,” you barely extend him a glance as you drag Noah in through your doorway, slamming the door closed and turning the key. You let out a deep sigh, your palms and forehead resting against the cool wood.

Noah calls your name softly. You squeeze your eyes tight and take in a breath before you turn to face him. Putting on the best phoney smile you can muster.

“Sorry about him, he’s always in everyone’s business. What are you-”

“He said he hasn’t seen you in a week,” he says matter-of-factly. There’s no hint of a smile on his face. “Your friends said they haven’t heard from you in days either, and you’ve been ignoring my texts. And calls.”

Your heart seizes at the sadness in his eyes. He stands there in your front room, his usual sweatpants and hoodie, but he just looks so defeated. You always tell him he looks like an upset puppy when he’s sad, and the puppy-dog eyes are working overtime on you right now. “I told you, I’ve just been busy, and I-”

“And you had a headache, and you missed my texts, and you didn’t want to talk,” his voice was as stern as his expression. You knew he wasn’t an idiot. That there’s no way he’d believe your—at best—flimsy excuses. You stand frozen to the spot, fiddling with the edge of your sleeve. Picking at the stitches, trying to distract yourself from the lump forming in your throat. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Noah questions.

You swallow roughly, “I don’t know what you... I don’t-”

He says your name firmly and takes a step towards you, “I’m going to ask you how you are, and I would like you to answer me honestly.”

Feeling your heart begin to race in your chest, you swallow again, but it does nothing to get rid of the tightness in your throat. Or the dizziness creeping up on you.

“Are you doing bad again?” He sounds softer this time, and you almost wish he would just scream at you because when he’s kind and attentive like this, you can’t help but crumble and shut down.

You clench your jaw as your breathing gets quicker, shallower, and you feel the unmistakable burn of tears in your eyes. “I’m fine,” your voice comes out cracked and weak, not at all the sound of someone who's fine.

“Don’t pretend you’re okay. Please don’t lie to me, because I know you’re not okay!” Noah crosses the room to meet you, holding his hands outstretched towards you, “what can I do for you? Please, I want to help.”

You cover your mouth as you choke back a sob, wrapping your other arm around your middle; you can’t hold it in anymore, and the floodgates open. Gasping for breath that seems to never come, you grip the front of your shirt tight in your fist, the clothing suddenly feeling suffocating and stiflingly hot.

“Oh, baby. Come here,” Noah takes you by the shoulders and pulls you into his chest, where you fall into him and cling onto him like he’s your only lifeline. “I need you to breathe for me, okay? Slowly, in and out,” he strokes soothing circles against your back as he demonstrates to you how to breathe. “Come and sit down here, yeah? The couch is right here.”

You barely register your legs moving for the numbness extending across your entire body, from your fingertips all the way down to your toes. Your tears are hot on your face, and every time you try to wipe them away, they’re just replaced by more in a never-ending stream. The room feels like it’s spinning around you as you move, only worsening the feeling of nausea rising in your throat. The plush cushions of the couch are a welcome relief.

“You’re holding your breath, I need you to breathe. Just how I am, that’s it,” he cradles your head to his chest through your shaky attempts to take in a breath through your nose and let it out slowly through your mouth. Your breath hitches uncontrollably with every inhale, taking in tiny bursts of air at a time. Noah, though, has nothing but praise on his lips: “That’s it. You’re doing so well, just listen to my voice.”

You missed his voice. As you worsened and withdrew, you found any excuse to avoid going out to see him, and you had been ignoring his calls for days. You knew you were doing it, and you missed him desperately, but with every day that passed, you found it harder and harder to reach out. It was hard for you to reach out for help in the first place, hard for you to admit to anyone that you needed help. Hard to admit it to yourself. Opting instead to suffer in silence and just push through it until you finally broke. You didn’t know any other way.

The familiar presence of him by your side eases the pace of your racing heart, allowing each breath to come a little easier. A little calmer. “I hate to see you hurting like this,” he whispers into your hair, his hand stroking through it gently, working to soothe the seemingly unquenchable anxiety. “I want to help you, please let me help you.”

It broke your heart to hear the pain in his voice. You never wanted to hurt him, but that’s all you seem to do. That cold hand of dread tightens its grip on your chest again, panic filling your lungs and replacing all the air. “I’m sorry,” you barely choke out, gripping onto Noah tighter. Warring with yourself, wanting to hold him close, but feeling like you need to push him away.

“You don’t need to apologise, ever. I’m here, I’m right here,” he runs his hand up and down your back, cradling you close. He can’t help but notice that through the fabric of your shirt, the bones of your spine are ever so slightly more prominent than before. He keeps his mouth shut. Focussing instead on quelling your distress and holding you tight in his arms.

“I just- I fuck everything up. I can’t do anything right, I don’t deserve your love, I don’t deserve you-” Once you start talking, you can’t stop, finally letting it all out until Noah cuts you off, incapable of hearing you degrade yourself anymore.

“No. No, that’s not even remotely true. Don’t say that about yourself,” he says firmly, holding you just a little tighter.

You shake your head against him, “all I do is hurt people and push you away, and I don’t know how to stop. You don’t deserve that, you shouldn’t have to put up with me.”

“I don’t ‘put up with you’. I love you, and I want to be here for you. Whatever you need, whenever you need it.”

“You shouldn’t have to drop everything to come deal with me when you’re so busy. You deserve someone that isn’t so fucking hard to love.”

With that, Noah pushes you backwards by the shoulders, holding you there so he can look into your eyes when he speaks. “You are not hard to love. Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever had the privilege of doing. You just…” He takes a deep breath, cupping your cheek and brushing away the tears from under your eyes. “You just need to let me in, and let me show you you’re just as worthy of love as anyone else is.”

The image of him blurs when the tears overflow from your eyes again, your face crumpling as you bow your head. “You’ll leave me," your voice shaking with the force of your sobs.

"Why would you ever think I'd leave you?" he asks, dismayed by your fear.

"Everyone always leaves," you tell him, voice brittle and quiet, shaking your head. "It's only a matter of time before you leave too."

"I love you," Noah feels tears prick at his own eyes. "I love you so, so much. And I'm not going anywhere." He lifts your head, once again brushing away your tears so he can look into your eyes, "please trust me to help you."

"I'm just so tired," you confess, and he pulls you into his arms again.

“I can't promise to fix all your problems, but I can promise you won't have to face them alone. There’s nothing you could do that would drive me away. And the things that would, I know you’d never do,” he runs a comforting hand through your hair as you cry, his other arm secure around your waist. Your tears soak into his shirt, but he doesn’t mind. He wants you to give it all to him—all your sorrows, all your grief—so that he can bear it with you.

You desperately want to believe his words. To lean on him when you need him the most, but that insecure piece inside of you won’t let you yield. You don’t know how to open up to anyone without feeling like a burden.

Noah stays right there with you until the tears subside and your breathing evens out. Your head resting in his lap as he reassuringly strokes your hair, you feel the beginnings of a dull ache in your head that makes you drowsy. He rubs soothing circles into your back with his other hand, shifting slightly to get a better look at your face. “Have you eaten yet today?” He asks tentatively. Feeling your throat constrict under the pressure of guilt, you know you can’t lie to him. You know he sees right through you, so you decide to try being honest by shaking your head. “Want me to cook something for you? Or we can order something? My treat.”

You know he means well, but you don’t know how to say you don’t have an appetite without worrying him. He won’t let you go the entire day without eating, but all you want to do is sleep.

“Please talk to me,” he pleads, “I need to hear you.”

On a shaky breath, you settle for a half truth. “I don’t think there’s anything to cook.”

“That’s fine, we can order food then. What do you want?”

Chewing on your lip, you freeze. The silence stretches on far too long for you to be deciding what restaurant to order from, it’s clear you’re unable to answer.

Noah sighs your name, “you have to eat something.”

“I know. I just… I just don’t want to,” he remains quiet, waiting for you to continue. “I don’t feel hungry. Thinking about it is overwhelming. I just want to sleep so I don’t have to think about it.”

“What have you been eating these past few days?” He asks cautiously, his tone light. Conscious to not sound accusatory.

You sigh, knowing there’s no way of escaping this. “Microwave stuff, mostly,” you play with the fabric of his sweatpants, feeling his leg underneath, fidgeting your anxiety away. “Rice, oats, ramen. Stuff I don’t have to wash up after.”

“Have you been eating every day?”

The question hangs heavy in the air, the tension only thickening when you answer "no,” barely above a whisper.

You feel him nod. Quiet for a moment until he too speaks so quietly, you almost didn’t hear it. “You can’t go on like this.”

“I know,” you confess.

“Please let me help you.”

The desperation in his voice is what does it—the final straw. You sit up straight, turning to face him. Wiping the residual tears from your cheeks and looking him in the eye. You know it’s time to really be honest.

“It’s hard for me-” Your voice catches in your throat as the threat of crying again creeps up on you, not quite realising how much your body would resist. Taking a second to compose yourself—a deep breath in, eyes closed, releasing it slowly—your resolve strengthens and you continue. “It’s hard for me to open up to people. To admit when I’m struggling. I’m so used to feeling like I’m burdening everyone with my problems, so I just keep it all to myself. And by the time I realise I’m going down that road again, it’s too late to stop it.”

“It’s never too late,” Noah says reassuringly, tucking both sides of your hair behind your ears—the left first, then the right. “I mean this in the most loving way possible, but you don’t get to decide whether you’re a burden. You don’t get to take that choice away from me. The choice to help you. Your problems will never be a burden to me, no matter how big or small. You will never be a burden to me. I love you. I choose you. And I’ll never think poorly of you for needing help, ever.”

You don’t know what to say. Your eyes fixed on his. One of your favourite things about him is his big brown eyes. Always so full of comfort. So full of love that even you, with all of your self-doubt, can’t deny it. “I’m sorry. I know you said not to apologise, but I think I need to. I’m sorry for making you worry and for pushing you away. I’m sorry for hurting you.”

Noah takes your hands in his. Large palms enveloping your own entirely. “Seeing you hurting is what hurts me the most. I love you so much, all I want is for you to be happy and healthy.”

You squeeze his hands in yours, “I love you, Noah. I’ll try harder, I promise. Feeling so unwanted for so long before I met you, I think I didn’t realise just how lucky I am to have you until now.” Noah raises one of your hands, kissing the back firmly and holding it there, savouring the feel of your skin against his lips. Timidly, you ask, “can we get pizza?”

He breaks out into a smile, “of course we can! But you have to text your friends back first," he bargains, "even if it’s just something short.”

“Deal,” you can’t help but return his smile. “My phone is upstairs, I’m just gonna go get it.”

“Wait!” he calls as you stand, pulling you back to the sofa and into him with a hand on the back of your head, “can I kiss you first?”

Without a word, you lean into him, closing the gap between you and feeling his lips on yours for the first time in weeks. That familiar burn of tears threatening to escape your eyes returns, and when you pull away, those beautiful brown eyes are full of concern.

“It’s okay,” you reassure him, laughing awkwardly, “happy tears. I just missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” his smile taking on a more solemn appearance this time. “But I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. I love you, please don’t ever forget that.”

“Don’t forget that I love you too. No matter what happens. No matter how stupidly self-destructive I act.”

Noah pulls you in for one final embrace before letting you retrieve your phone. You spend time texting back each of your friends, apologising for your absence and telling them you were okay, that Noah is here, and you’d explain more later. Noah, sitting at your right, creates your pizza order, periodically asking what else you’d like adding.

The two of you spend the night watching trash TV, settling into your usual comfort and hurling insults at the characters for making stupid decisions while you eat your food. Only realising after it arrived just how hungry you really were. And when you’re finished eating, Noah and you head upstairs.

You feel like a new person after you shower, coming out of the bathroom to find Noah relaxed against your headboard. The sheets on your bed changed, and a fresh set of clothes lay waiting for you to change into for bed.

Accepting finally how much lighter everything feels when someone is around to help you. You slide under the clean sheets, comforted by the warmth of Noah’s body beside you for the first time in too long. And just as you fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat and the feeling of his hand stroking your back, you’re determined to never let things get this bad again. Knowing you need to trust him, because trust is the foundation of love, and you love Noah with every fibre of your being. And despite how hard it is sometimes, you need to let him love you back.

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✉ C:/SYSTEM/APP/TAG

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#so if noah could come over and drag me out of this pit i'm in that would be great!#noah sebastian #noah sebastian x reader #noah sebastian fanfiction #noah sebastian fanfic #bad omens #bad omens cult #fluff #angst #C:/PROJECTS/MYWORK/ONESHOT #C:/PROJECTS/SEARCH/TAG/ANGST #C:/PROJECTS/SEARCH/TAG/FLUFF #C:/PROJECTS/SEARCH/TAG/EMOTIONALHURTCOMFORT

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randombush3 · 1 year ago

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audentes fortuna iuvat

alexia putellas x reader

part one, part two

words: 9541

summary: alexia and you as posh + becks III

content warnings: there’s some (a lot of) cheating + postpartum depression. it’s more frustrating than sad though x

notes: this covers 2019-22(ish). It was SUPPOSED to be the last part. It’s not anymore. I’m gonna do a fourth to deal w the mess I have created in a more self-indulgent amount of words than the 3k i had planned. That will probably have smut in it 😛

“Y/n left me.”

The limousine you are in is completely black, save for the white lines being measured out right next to you.

“What?” says Jenni.

“She left me,” Alexia says once more. The hotel room is a non-committal beige. They lie in the same bed, the older of the two welcoming her lost teammate wordlessly and without judgement. Tomorrow, they will return to Barcelona, losers yet another time. “She moved back to london. She took Nico.”

“She can’t just take Nico, can she?”

“Y/n, how’s Nico?” Your stomach turns, but whether that is provoked by the thought of the baby boy you left crying in your father’s arms or by the white powder outlining the rim of the woman’s nostrils, you don’t know.

Your son’s creasing eyes, red face, and grabbing hands appear in front of you. He screams as you walk away. He doesn’t understand why he has not smelt Alexia in weeks, and he misses the comfort of home.

Everyone waits for your answer. No one comments on the bags under your eyes. “He's fine,” you say with a smile. “He loves it here.”

“I think she is depressed,” Alexia tells Jenni, comforted by the arms wrapped around her waist, holding her close and tightly and reminding her that she is not as alone as you have made her feel. “She told me that she couldn’t be in Barcelona anymore, but she said that without giving me a chance to come with her. Her bags were packed before the conversation started — she might as well have called me from the plane.”

“Are you angry at her?”

“Yes.”

Alexia thinks about it.

“No.”

“No,” you say when they point at your very own line. The drug holds a place of both familiarity and hatred in your heart. The fine, white powder reminds you of greatness – of being the most successful girl group in the UK – but, also, of hospital visits. It’s not a past addiction, but it could have been. You light a cigarette instead, though it will make the vehicle reek. “I can't. I have a son.”

“You’re not a saint.” They boo. “You’re allowed to have fun. I saw you the other day, and you had no qualms with any drugs then.”

“No, I'm not a saint,” you reply. You regret that night — however little you remember. “But I am a mother.”

“Is it that thing? Postpartum?” Jenni asks. “The baby blues are really shitty, I've heard, but they’re not supposed to cripple you. Maybe the relationship has other issues.”

“I'm not angry at her, Jenni,” Alexia repeats. “I miss Nico. He looks like her. He has started to look a lot more like her now.”

“He would definitely suit those sparkly bralettes.” Jenni giggles at the thought.

With an understandable lack of good humour, Alexia ponders something more realistic. “He would suit a Barcelona kit.”

“He would be made for it. You are his mother.”

“I'm not angry at her,” Alexia says for the third time, just to make herself believe it. Just to carve those words into her bones and tell herself that it isn’t anger, what she’s feeling. “I don't want to be angry at her. I think I'm going to see if I can move to arsenal.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Well, I'm not angry at her.”

“Alexia.” Jenni cups her cheek tenderly. “Ale.” She knows she shouldn’t. She’s not angry at you, and so there is no punishment needed. Not that… Not that kissing Jenni would ever be utilised as a weapon to get back at you. Or that she’d actually kiss her.

“Daddy, I can't get him tonight. No, I don't want to stay over. Daddy, I…” You hate the baby. You hate yourself. You hate that Spain hasn’t done well, and that your fiancée is disappointed that nothing is how it was supposed to be. Alexia is probably lying awake in bed, missing her son, and missing you. You expect one of her teammates to call you soon, and tell her that she needs you. You’re her person. “I'm going to get some sleep and I'll pick him up tomorrow. Probably around lunchtime, okay?”

“Alexia, bésame.”

…

You had passively bought your house. It’s how property sale works when you’re a celebrity. People are always willing to do things for you if you know the price, and it never hurts to use your name to add a new flashy level to whatever stupid business they are running. It’s a mutual exploitation, to some extent.

Highgate is beautiful. The house is beautiful.

The reception room, with its high, decorated ceilings, is your favourite place to numbly take in the twisted jigsaw of your life when Nico has cried himself to sleep. The nursery is on the first floor. He is near enough for safety, but at a distance that allows you to regret all the mistakes you have made.

You watch him roll over onto his stomach, eyes trained on the baby monitor though your fingers graze the ivory keys of your new piano, attempting to compose something worthwhile. At this rate, your solo career is going to fail just like your relationship seems to be doing.

Yesterday, while Alexia seemingly disappeared from the face of the Earth, you came out. It was an off-hand comment during the Graham Norton Show. A quick ‘my fiancée named him. She’s from Barcelona’ was all it took. You hope Alexia, wherever she may be, has heard about it. Jenni would have told her. You trust Jenni to be somewhat on your side because she always has been.

The doorbell rings just as you sniffle, wiping away the tear that slips down your cheek. “Don’t be pathetic,” you mutter to yourself. “You didn’t pay five million pounds to sit here and cry. You chose to come back home.”

Being in England – colder, drearier, lonelier England – has made you realise that your decision was not the right one. Or maybe it was. It has proven that you are as terrible a mother as you convinced yourself you were back in Barcelona, and it has also shoved the cavity Alexia leaves in your life when you refuse her entry right down your throat in the form of a constant lump and a dull stabbing in your chest whenever you think about anything past whether Nico has had anything to eat. You can’t even feed him properly, despite it being supposedly in your nature. You buy formula from the nearest Waitrose.

The doorbell rings again.

The insistence is not uncommon seeing as you are, at the minute, the English press’s number one target. You open the CCTV app on your phone so that you can decide whether or not to ignore the potential stalker, and your heart rate spikes when you see the hooded figure standing on the porch. Back to the door, it is not possible to determine the threat. A well-buried maternal instinct kicks in for once, and you ensure that Nico is still peacefully out cold before getting up to answer the door with the poker from the Victorian fireplace firmly in your grip. Just in case.

You are a mother, in whatever capacity you have decided that role looks like, and so you undo the three latches on the door with brave, protective fingers. The baby monitor’s volume has increased, and the fuzz of white noise is audible if Nico were to make a sound. The vague repulsion at the idea of it all is only an aftertaste in your silent prayer for the hooded figure to not want to kill you. Some sick part of your brain imagines Nico dead, as well. It tortures you.

The poker in your other hand, for the most fleeting of moments, is almost plunged into your chest. The imaginary, self-inflicted wound makes you think of the blood and how the baby upstairs would wail until someone found him. The grimace of annoyance on your lips is nothing new, but you have no more time to torment yourself because the doorbell is pressed again, rather impatiently.

You open the door and the hooded figure is right in front of you. “He’s asleep,” you say, the Spanish foreign on your tongue.

Alexia shrugs, and her hood falls down, revealing the brunette tendrils that hang from her slowly sinking bun. “I came for you,” she replies, so earnestly that it is as if nothing ever happened: past pain forgotten and replaced by sprouting memories of soft kisses and mornings where leaving was too hard to do. Some of them, you think, are not real. They don’t seem to be. Your blank stare is unsettling. You almost don’t believe her. “Can we talk?” she tries, and you notice the team-issued duffle on the tiled floor she is standing on. Then, from the pocket of her hoodie, she extracts a pastry box. The plastic window is filled with circles of different colours, and she holds out the macaroons to you as if to bribe her way into a home in which she is unsure she belongs to.

Stepping aside, leaning the poker against the wall by the door, you scratch at the bare skin of your neck. Alexia, while sweeping an arm down to collect her bag, fixes her gaze onto the ring you are wearing, and the diamond glistens with hope that this can all be fixed. “Would you like to come inside?”

She swallows the whine of anguish that tears her heart open at the idea that this might never be her house to live in, too, and she follows you dutifully as you lead her through hallways far more luxurious than the flat in Barcelona could ever be. This is what you left her for – the person you are, no longer in worn clothing with messy hair, is quite the opposite of the woman with her back to her moments before she had to focus on football. The necklace draped on your sharpened collarbones is new, and she does not dare believe what she has been hearing is true. Yes, there are pictures, but she trusts you. She will always trust you.

“Have a seat,” you say, gesturing to the wooden dining table. It is clean enough for her to determine that it is unused. Alexia places the macaroons in front of her, and aches at how you sit at the opposite end.

“I…”

“I thought you were going to give me all the time that I needed.” It is a statement of distance, as if your location is not enough.

Alexia, eyes widening at how unwelcome she suddenly feels, needs only to remind herself of the impending date of the wedding. It is beginning to loom uncomfortably, with the excitement of getting married drained out like a low tide on a deserted beach. “We have two weeks. If it isn’t going to happen, then you should tell me now. We have to give everyone notice so that they can cancel their flights.” Your silence spurs her on. “You will need to contact the wedding planner, because you refused to let me have a hand in any of it so I don’t even have their number. I’m sorry that you won’t be able to wear your dress. Vivienne Westwood is a big thing for you, I know. I’m sorry that it’s inconvenient.”

“But Alexia,” you whisper, “I don’t not want to get married.”

Her eyebrows furrow, head tilted slightly to the left. “I know. That is why I am saying this.”

Your voice grows louder. “No, no. Sorry, that wasn’t the easiest thing to understand.” Across the dining table, your love that has faltered, that has hesitated and been reconsidered and been stamped down over the past month, extends towards her: its final destination, always and forever. Alexia feels it grab her by the throat, wrenching the words from her before she can even formulate a thought in response, and her body is so drawn to you, in such a powerful fashion, that she pushes her chair out from the table with a grating scrape and is stepping towards you with a finality that makes her wonder if she’ll ever leave your side.

As she approaches, the idea that she is here becomes a little too real. You have played with the fantasy of it, of course, but the tenderness in her usually fierce eyes does not match the anger you had expected, and, in the most feeble fashion, you have never felt more apologetic in your life.

“I’m so sorry,” you begin to say. Tears stream down your face with freed anguish, and the words are so simple yet they bear the weight of your entire soul. “I’m so sorry, darling. I made a mistake, and I have been met with the most crushing of realisations: I can’t do this without you, Alexia.” I still want to marry you, Alexia.

The room seems to close in on your despair, attempting to bottle it, almost, and keep you trapped underneath a haze of emotions you don’t quite know how to sort through. “I… I’m beginning to hate him.” The confession hangs heavy over Alexia’s bowed head as she stands frozen in place, stuck in her journey towards you but unable to arrive. “I’m acutely aware of how cruel it is,” you continue, this next admission being what agonises you the most. It floods the room with guilt, and your voice trembles with self-condemnation that reigns harsher than any other voice in your head.

“It’s ridiculous. I’m evil and I’m wrong, and I just feel like it is inherently in my nature to be like this, as though some fault has been built into me with warning signs we evidently ignored.” You struggle to breathe. “I wish I could take back the day we decided to have him,” you confess, your voice barely above a whisper, lips doused in tears, skin searing with shame when Alexia cups your cheek with a strong, calloused hand. “He should not have to be stuck with me as a mother.”

Your chest heaves, and you are finished. You have never verbalised it before now, and it is impossible to decide whether it has helped remove the lead lining of your heart where it has been bolstered against your will. Her other hand steadily rises to your face, but then, with only a second of hesitation, she is pulling you upwards and enveloping you in her embrace. You feel a little bit closer to her. “Mi amor,” Alexia murmurs, tone cracked with sorrow and regret. “Lo siento mucho. Desearía haber sabido, desearía haber estado allí para ti.”

Gently, she tilts your face upwards to meet her gaze. “You are not evil and no estás equivocada. Estoy aquí ahora, y no te dejaré enfrentar esto sola nunca más.” You collapse into her. “I’m here, cariño, and I am not going anywhere.”

The sentiment is wonderful, and Alexia makes good on her word.

When Nico begins to cry, the sound piercing through your choked sobs, Alexia realises she has missed all of her life with you. Being separated and being apart due to work, she now knows, are two excruciatingly different things. The whiny wails from upstairs visibly jar you, though you pull away from Alexia to attend to him. “I will do it,” she declares, though her firmness is not mean. “Sit down. Eat the macaroons – they’re… ‘to die for’?” You nod with instinctive encouragement. “Sí. They’re to die for. Try. Jenni says that the pink ones are the best.”

“Jenni picked them out?” you ask with a briefly regained humour, eyebrows raising. “Had to get your friend to choose your apology gift?” In truth, neither of you know what Alexia would be apologising for, but Nico’s crying grows more incessant and Alexia is climbing the carpeted staircase before the topic can be discussed.

Alexia reaches her son with tears brimming in her eyes. The failure of Spain at the World Cup is amplified by the idea that she has disappointed him, though he does not yet possess the tools to pledge his allegiance to her country. In fact, Nico has been sleeping in Manchester United attire (your father has been his primary carer of late, and he does not charge you money, so the price is obviously Alexia’s sanity). She is more than glad to smell his nappy, and delighted about the opportunity to change him into something less hideous.

“Mama loves you so much,” she tells him as she manoeuvres his chubby legs into a plain, inoffensive onesie. “I promise, petit. I am going to help her, okay? And we are going to get through this together.” Alexia forgets about the taste of Jenni’s lips and the heat between them. “Mama just doesn’t see the direction she is going in. It is like her eyes are covered, and she is telling herself that she is walking down the wrong path, but this is not true. You are the most special thing in the world to us. You are the sunrise, the sunset, and the hours of the day.”

She pauses to stand him up on his tiny feet, hands hoisted underneath his armpits. He is heavier than when she last held him, but she is stronger than before, too. Women’s football is growing, along with her muscles. Nico babbles out a vague reply, but Alexia hears what he is trying to say. “I agree. We’ll be alright.” And, with all her heart, it rings true.

…

The following day, she calls the doctor for you, script written out on a piece of paper in front of her, translated perfectly so that her concern does not waver the information she needs to tell the receptionist. The clinic is famous and discreet, and they are quick to prescribe you antidepressants before the week draws to a close. You won’t be able to drink at your wedding, and everyone might think you are pregnant again, but Alexia reassures you that it will be worth it.

Wrapped up in your own bubble, the three of you enjoy London in a way that isn’t possible in Barcelona.

Here, Alexia has no commitment to football. There are no training sessions she must rush off to, there are no teammates to pry, and no one else to interfere with your private little routine. You quite like it, and she does too. It is only temporary, before you fly out to Menorca and hand Nico off to Eli in order to enjoy your respective bachelorette parties and then, in exactly seven days, your wedding itself.

“You’re still smoking,” Alexia says disapprovingly, the sleep in her voice enough to make you feel a pang of guilt. It’s late at night when Nico has finally been soothed from his aching gums, and she has been able to climb back into bed expecting to find you asleep already. “Why are you awake?”

“I’m still smoking,” you tell her. She sighs at the way you parrot her words, but presses an affectionate kiss to the junction of your neck and shoulders despite the lingering smell of cigarettes. “If I can’t drink, I’m going to smoke. This is Hollywood.”

“This is Highgate.” Her accent curls around the name with something a little too foreign for her to ever consider this place home. “Why are you awake?” she repeats.

You look down at the open notebook in your lap, the pages either blank or full of crossed-out lyrics. “He was so loud, but I can’t seem to write anything either so, really, it has been quite redundant.”

“I had to get a glass full of ice and hold it to my fingers so that I could help him. I could have lost some very important assets, but it seemed to do the trick.” He’s teething. You’re telling yourself that the antidepressants are little pills of miracle, and have kicked in already. “Feel.” She presses two freezing fingers to your cheek, and you gasp, flinching away from her.

“There’s a teething ring downstairs, you know,” you tell her. She shrugs. Maybe it isn’t clean. “Don’t give yourself frostbite. I happen to quite like your fingers.”

Alexia’s smirk is beyond suggestive, and her lips hit your neck once more with an entirely different heat to them. “Yeah?” You push her head away. “I bet it would feel good. Nice and cold.”

“You’re delirious.”

She continues to kiss you. “I don’t know what that means,” she mumbles into your neck, until her lips reach your face and she is near climbing into your lap – notebook long pushed onto the floor. “Dímelo en español.”

“No lo sé.”

“Ah. Una palabra inteligente.”

“Claro.”

She laughs into the kiss she presses against your lips. She never has never felt like this with anyone else. Never this relaxed, or loved, or safe. “Me vas a matar con tu inteligencia y voy a sentirme estúpida para siempre.”

“I love you,” you state softly. “I love every part of you.” Alexia, in that moment, decides to never do what she did with Jenni again, and to never break your heart by informing you of her betrayal.

…

You’re married.

You’re married to Alexia, a woman who bears the beauty of a goddess and the strength and will of someone who could capture the sun and tame the fire that rages on its surface.

You admire her as she sleeps so peacefully beside you, tanned skin warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the large windows of the hotel room. Later, you will get on the ferry, go back to Barcelona, and then fly to Capri for three days alone before Alexia’s preseason starts. Aside from a few meetings with Dave, you theoretically aren’t swamped with anything. You’ll be joining her in her city with Nico with a bit more permanence than last time.

Alexia buries her face in the covers, crawling into your open arms the minute the sunlight rouses her. “Everything is sore,” she groans, her bare skin slightly sticking to yours, the sweat from last night not yet gone.

“What happened to ‘mi vida, one more time won’t hurt’?” you tease, impersonating her heavy accent over your English with enough drama to get her to elicit another grumble. This time, it’s something about being bullied. “Darling, we have to get up. We’re having breakfast with our parents, and apparently Nico has been upset that we got a night to ourselves.”

“Pobrecito,” she replies with a newfound level of English sarcasm. She spent the wedding reception avoiding the dance floor, engaged in a long conversation with your father. The topics spanned over most areas of life, and briefly touched upon how you are doing now. Alexia, with much pleasure, confirmed the improvement, however miniscule it has been. She is very proud of you, and he is too. “I only want one thing for breakfast.”

Her hands begin to roam, the band of her wedding ring hitting your pubic bone. “Mi vida, one more time won’t hurt,” she mocks you from before but in her sexier, Spanish husk, sucking at your collarbone, straddling your waist.

You replace your near moan with a thoughtful hum. “I really want pancakes. Do you think they’ll make me some?”

Downstairs, where it is brighter and impossible to conceal the hickeys on both of your necks, you greet your parents, brother, Anya, and Gio. Alexia’s mother, her sister, and Jenni are sitting at the table, too. Your baby is pretending he isn’t teething, and grinning like an angel.

“How’s married life?” Anya asks as you take a seat opposite her, Alexia to your right. The table has a gradient of bilingualism, but Gio discovered that she picks up Spanish quite easily considering she can already speak one romance language. “We’ve already found, like, four articles talking about it.”

“How?” you ask, but you are not offended.

Gio shrugs. “Drones, I guess. Nothing bad, though. Some speculation about the other bride – if the article does mention that. Most talk is on the dress.” It was a bloody good dress. “And I suspect that there’ll be a juicy little question about who was your Maid of Honour.”

“Don’t be salty,” you tell her. The MOH issue was sorted out years ago – perhaps 2015 – when you binged Friends together despite having watched it thousands of times before. Anya has been yours, Gio will be hers, and you will be Gio’s. And they say trios never work.

“I left Mia with her dad for this.”

“You shouldn’t have had a baby with a man-slag,” Anya says with a snort, enjoying her second mimosa and Gio’s grimace at the idea of her daughter having to put up with her father’s revolving door of one-night-stands. “You’re one to make terrible decisions. At least our girl over here’s married someone who looks at her like she’s hung the moon.”

Alexia turns to you with a smile, as if on cue, with Nico in her lap. You glance at his rounded cheeks and shining eyes, looking back up at your friends as though to check they are still there. Alexia leans forwards so that she can whisper in your ear. “Te amo. Nico, también. Mi familia es perfecta.”

…

Returning to Barcelona comes with one negotiated condition on your part. You buy a bigger apartment, where there is space for an office and extra bedrooms. Alexia says her teammates will be taking the piss out of her grand new place the minute she sees it, but she is more than content to contribute to the finances with her new-and-improved salary for this season. “It’s weird to think that I’m from Mollet,” murmurs Alexia, standing in the middle of the large lounge area, surrounded by boxes. Most are from your old flat, but a few have been flown in from London. Alexia wanted you to have your Grammy with you. “This place is so fancy.”

“It’s half of what the men’s team get,” you remind her, holding Nico with care as he gnaws away on a frozen carrot. His saliva drips onto you, but the antidepressants are working, and the therapy has been effective enough for you to start taking childcare in turns. (You had tried to previously, but Alexia wanted you to focus on yourself, knowing that things will change for all of you once the season started.) “Hey.” You place your hand on her shoulder. She tickles Nico’s chin. “We deserve this. You deserve this. Why don’t you host one of your team’s dinners? I’ll take Nico round to your mum’s – God knows she’d love to shove some food down my throat, too.”

She shakes her head, strands of brown unstraightened due to the stress of the move and falling out of her bun with a determination to defy her hair bobble. “They would kill me if I did it without you. They’re all far too grateful that you invited Taylor Swift to our wedding.”

“She’s a friend.” If you hadn’t been distracted by various other happenings that night, you’d have clocked that Alexia’s side of the guests were completely up to their ears in celebrities they’d never expected to meet. “Okay, so do you want me to stay here?”

“I always want you to stay here,” she answers.

“Not what I meant.”

“I won’t take it back.”

Nico babbles an incoherent yet cutely Spanish-y noise, though his words are getting closer to being said at the old age of eight months. Then, suddenly, something in him clicks. “Mama,” he squeals, his little fist scrunching up the fabric of your t-shirt. “Mamama.”

“Nicolau!” Alexia replies with just as much enthusiasm, cupping his cheeks. She kisses his nose, and then his forehead, and then his chubby knees and socked feet. “Nicolau, sí, la mama et té a las mans! Bon noi, el meu bon i intel·ligent noi.”

“Does that count?”

“Mama,” Nico repeats, tugging your earlobe. “Mama. Mama.” It is easy to forget about the (lessening) resentment you harbour when he speaks. Alexia gets him to say it as many times as she can before he goes back to his carrot, but, even then, the two of you stay in that spot, marvelling at your creation.

Slowly, she turns around in a circle, absorbing the plain walls and towers of boxes. “This is going to be good. Life is going to be good,” you declare with such a firmness that it has to be true. “Darling, let’s get to unpacking and then we can think about a date for this dinner party.”

“We are going to plan the party?” She raises her eyebrows at you. “Is this party going to start at five o’clock?”

“Not all of us shit yellow and red.” (In a national sense – you’d have haemorrhoids for United any day of the week.)

Alexia takes Nico off you, in a show of cultural dominance. You’re actually outnumbered, considering he isn’t a British Citizen, and though he shares no DNA with your wife, he has inherited the same ability to narrow his eyes just enough to serve absolute cunt whenever he so pleases. If you weren’t feeling so ganged up on, you’d be a little impressed. “Nico y yo vamos a hacer croquetas de jamón. Adiós.”

“Darling, the kitchen isn’t–” But you cut yourself off, deciding that she can discover that on her own, along with the criminally empty fridge. You don’t hide your smugness at all when she finds you in your almost-finished bedroom, wearing a look of utter disappointment and mumbling out a heartbroken request for a food delivery as soon as possible.

…

November marks three years of being together and, also, four weeks of having Alexia’s ‘DNA’ – a pomeranian called Nala, whose Instagram account is run by her favourite parent after you called it silly and told your wife you’d much rather attend to your own seventeen million followers.

Towards the end of the month, after a well-spent morning and then a family outing to Barcelona Zoo, Alexia meets Jenni Hermoso in a restaurant in what Jenni calls ‘your new rich-people neighbourhood’ in her text to Alexia.

Alexia, really and truly, is happy to have her best friend back in Barcelona. She missed her last year, when Jenni had returned to Atleti, and that separation maybe made what happened the night Spain was knocked out of the World Cup just that bit more understandable. “You’re a Culer, no matter how hard you try to fight it,” Alexia had said when she had climbed back into her own bed, not wanting to fall asleep in Jenni’s arms. “It was terrible to not have Y/n or you.”

You and Jenni: Alexia’s people.

“How’s your wife?” Jenni asks with a grin, two glasses of wine into a pleasant evening at an expensive restaurant. “You’ve left her with Nico, so something must be working.”

In truth, you have been determined to get better. There were articles released not long after the photos of your wedding were circulated, and those speculated a lot about how you are finding motherhood. The baby pictured, captured by long-range lenses and invasive drones, was the world’s first glimpse at what Nico Putellas L/n looks like, and reminded many of them that you had a child to care for when in London, yet were frequently spotted at nightclubs and parties. You rise to most challenges, however, and find it a lot easier to adapt to weekly therapy sessions and pills every morning when you have a wrongful image to disprove.

“It’s as if it never happened,” Alexia says, both with pride and surprise. “She now seeks to spend time with him. She takes him with her to the recording studio – the album’s coming along well.” It’s your first on your own. Nico plays with one mixing desk, while Dave (flown in from London with the promise that the Barcelona sun will do wonders for his wife’s misery) plays with another. “And… Jenni, we’ve been talking. The clinic that we used for Nico asked us if we wanted to reserve sperm when we first had him, and now they have called asking if now is a good time. I think… I think that she is really considering it. She told me yesterday that her therapist wants me to sit in on the next session, so we can go over how we can make this time different.”

Jenni frowns, which is not what the woman opposite her had expected at all. “Why are you two having more children? You’re only twenty-five, Ale. Isn’t this going to affect your career?”

“The men do it all the time.” She’s done a spot of research. They are younger than her when their girlfriends start getting pregnant, and they continue to play with the added admiration that they are fathers as well.

“Yes, but they have the benefit of getting paid millions. They don’t have to fight with their federation for pitches or pay, and they can focus on football without their career sparking controversy for even existing.”

“Then my children will grow up with a mother who fights for change.”

“Or they grow up with a pop star who only wants things she cannot have and a footballer who can’t spend any time with them because she is too busy speaking at various conventions so that the next league match isn’t cancelled.”

“Jenni, do you think your opinion would be different if Y/n was a man?”

This elicits laughter from the other woman, who rolls her eyes in a way that can only be described as condescending. “Alexia, you’re forgetting that I’m a lesbian too, which is a magnificent feat.” Jenni references the kiss they shared, and what happened after that. “But, no. I don’t. I want you to be the greatest footballer in the world, and you want that too. What are you going to do when Y/n tells you she wants to move back to England? Are you going to give up your future here for her?”

The waiter interrupts briefly, collecting their empty plates and carting them off with a mission to retrieve the bill after a sharply declined offer for the dessert menu. “You don’t even know if that will happen,” Alexia scoffs, though she is a little sad that her exciting news hasn’t been well-received. “I was going to say that I’d think about the name Jennifer if it ends up being a girl, but now I’m leaning more towards María…”

She is kicked under the table, and she has to hold in her cry of pain because this restaurant is one of your favourite places to eat. “Mapi cannot have this victory over me. She’d be insufferable. Ale, you simply aren’t allowed to do that.” There’s another kick, but it is more playful this time.

Alexia laughs, smiling and thankful that the tension has diffused. “I’m only joking. Y/n has a list scribbled in the back of her lyric book. She’ll probably be called Elena.” That is much more acceptable to Jenni’s ears, and she files that information away for next year, when she’ll tell Mapi that Alexia doesn’t like her name.

…

It works. Alexia and you are lucky. The doctor tells Alexia that, if she were a man, the two of you would have to be extremely careful. Your wife marvels at your ability to destroy your body and stay fertile, but she supposes that you are not the kind of woman to be a lesbian. Sometimes, she wakes up in a cold sweat, believing that you have changed your mind and left her.

The New Year is a fresh start. Alexia decides to fix the (not so) hidden cracks in your relationship. She confides in her newly-acquired therapist. She may have made a mistake once; the secret is sandwiched between her worries about your susceptibility to depression and how Nico is a decided food critic.

Though the therapist, a lovely bilingual woman named Sofía, raises her eyebrows, she does not pry. She slides a paper calling card over to Alexia. The paper squeaks along the coffee table between the two comfortable armchairs of the office. “I specialise in couples. Seeing as your wife is already a client of mine, I think you should consider a joint session.” Alexia is new to the idea of mental health. Before, she had been too focused on football to care about it. Even when her father died, any professional she spoke to was only hearing how her mind worked because she knew it was what was best for her performance. “And, Alexia.” She looks up at the therapist with a small, nervous smile. “Congratulations on the pregnancy. I am sure Nico will make a wonderful older brother.”

Morning sickness drags you out of your shared bed most days.

Alexia asks you about couples’ therapy when you have finished your dry-heaving one morning.

“I mean,” you begin before pausing, gulping down the sour taste in your mouth and hoping nothing else is trying to hit the toilet water until tomorrow. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.” She is dressed in her training kit, but she slings her jumper over your shoulders as soon as you shiver. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“It would do no harm.” As long as Sofía does not bring up Alexia’s confession, your statement will ring true. “You book the appointment. It’ll be easier to work around your schedule that way.”

“When are you flying back to London?” Her question is not filled with hatred for the city, but with resignation to the fact that your job involves you being stretched between here and there.

“Not until next month. I thought that I could take Nico to an away game with my dad if I got a flight for Saturday. The rest of the week would be interviews and photoshoots.”

“How’s the album doing?”

So far, your songs are only written when Alexia has paid you enough attention to swirl your thoughts and blur your vision. It is in these moments that the lingering, sinking weight inside of you dissipates. “Dave remains hopeful. It won’t fail, but I need it to be better than what we currently have.”

Shamelessly, Alexia is aware of her effect on your songs. She smirks; “Alba has been begging to babysit, you know.” With no care for your current state, Alexia’s eyes rake up and down your body. You grow embarrassed by how you are slumped over the toilet, and how she is standing above you as though she runs your world. “You look beautiful, mi amor,” she murmurs as you bashfully duck your head between your bent arms.

“You’re a flirt.” It feels too late for her to still be in the flat. “And you’re going to miss training if you don’t get a move on. There are eggs in the fridge, and Nico definitely liked the omelette you made him a few days ago. He’ll be waking up soon.”

A small sigh escapes the midfielder’s lips, but the prospect of the things she loves most in the world appearing in her life consecutively is enough to convince her to pad her way out the bathroom, swanning into the corridor with a little grin on her face as she sings out ‘bon dia’ to an impressively multilingual toddler and heads into the kitchen with the domestic intention of getting breakfast started. She leaves an omelette out for you, which you attack shortly after Alexia and Nico disappear into their daily routine. She drops him off at preschool, and you pick him up a few hours later, taking him first for lunch with Alba, and then to the studio.

You come home to a showered Alexia who is memorising her most recent match. She lets Nico slide into her lap without hesitation, but she stays focused on the football even when he tugs on the strands of hair falling out of ponytail. You marvel at the idea of having enough room in your heart for so much love. You decide that you are not like Alexia, though it is not necessarily a terrible thing. A further observation from watching your wife settle her son with a calm, muttered Catalan telling-off, coaxing him into loving football as though he does not already, is that you are so very content with your life at the moment.

But 2020 kind of sucks.

For the entire world.

You’re cut off from your home in any other manner than a digital one, and being stuck in a luxurious penthouse in Barcelona isn’t the worst fate, but it really isn’t ideal.

Elena, however, has the benefit of coming into the world with ever (physically) present parents, who could recite the java script for Zoom given that they spend hours on therapy calls. Elena, bright and smiley and the picture of her mother, spends the first few months of her life in a happy, happy family, protected by an entire football team and a fierce older brother. (And a yappy Pomerianian called Nala.)

“Y/n doesn’t like the name María,” Jenni tells Mapi when Alexia sends the first picture of your new addition to the Barcelona group chat.

“The next baby is going to be a Jennifer,” Mapi says, to both the forward and the unimpressed midfielder walking a few paces in front of such a silly conversation. “For that, I can only feel sorry for her.”

…

The routine changes the following year.

It starts with an abrupt but expected conversation. One that Alexia has been dreading.

Your album – the first one that is just you – was released two months ago, and it has done too well. Selfishly, Alexia had hoped it would fail. You have enough money, and she is earning more and more each season. Success, unfortunately, means that this little life can no longer exist. Or can it?

“I have to do it,” you whisper to her, tears in your eyes though the smell of sex still lingers. The quietness of a child-free apartment allows for you to hear her gulp. “It’ll be different this time, darling, but I can’t be here anymore. I can’t fly out to London every few days. I can’t leave you with a five-month-old and a toddler when you are training every day and playing matches every weekend. It’s not fair on anyone.”

Alexia kisses your bare shoulder, hands slipping round your waist as she pulls your sweaty body into her. Her chest presses against your back, but she is only behind you in this bed. She does not agree with you. She does not support it. But, like she always does, she bites her tongue. “If that’s what you want,” she replies, and part of you dies with the thought that she does not really care. “I love you. I want what’s best for you. For us.” And she tells Jenni all about it when she goes to see her a week later – the flimsy excuse of meeting a childhood friend for dinner enough to wrap a cloth around your eyes and leave you at home with a screaming toddler and a baby whose only flaw is that she grows distraught the moment she is put down.

In the dimly lit living room, the tension hangs thick in the air. You lock eyes. “Why can't you just move with us? Everyone will want you, darling, and life would be easier,” you plead, a month down the line. The house in Highgate has been readied for your more permanent return.

Alexia takes a deep breath, her gaze unwavering. “Why can't you get it into your head that I'm not leaving Spain or Barcelona? This is my home.”

“What about the children? School? Life? My career? Does it mean nothing to you?”

Her eyes soften. Your heart breaks, and the piece of you that has already died somehow dies again. “I'm thinking of the children. All the time, I think of them. About the reputation of my name – their name. Putellas, the greatest in the world, or Putellas, the one with potential wasted at West Ham?”

“You're being selfish, Lex,” you snap. “This is an opportunity for all of us, not just me. Think about their future!”

“Their future is here, in the culture they know, the languages they speak. I won't strip them of their identity for the sake of a 'better' life. And my career? I've worked too hard to build what I have here. I won't throw it away.” I don’t want to throw it away. Underscored by Don’t leave me again.

The room echoes with the weight of her voice. “Their identity comes from both of us.” It’s too final for either of your liking. Elena begins to cry in her cot. “I want to try it. I want you to be open to trying it.”

She gestures to the suitcases by the door. “Trying it and doing it are two different things. You’re taking them from me!”

“You’re probably going to love life without them anyway!” you shout. You feel like the crying baby, except the tears rolling down your cheeks carry much more suffering than hers. “You’ll – what? You’ll go out with your friends, and you’ll be able to go to the gym whenever you want. No arguing, no crying, no toddler to entertain, no nappies to change. You never wanted children. I forced it upon you. I regret it, and I’m sorry. We’ll go.”

“Don’t go.”

I don’t want you to go.

“I have to.”

You turn your back to her as you fly through the corridor, prepared to console Elena in a taxi. Alexia slips her ring off her finger, and clutches it in her palm instead. Desperately, she searches for a solution. There is nothing within her reach, not even you.

…

She is an island amongst a sea of happy people. She is going to be the greatest footballer in the world. It kills her to realise that she can now focus on football.

Nico starts nursery, attending the same school you once did. He adjusts to life in London seamlessly, and Elena does not seem to care either way. He learns more English every day, and his other mother calls him nightly to read to him.

With childcare more than sorted, you are free to be interviewed, pictured, and invited to events. You rake in the publicity, especially after laying so slow over the course of the lockdown in Spain.

“Alexia.” Jenni’s hands knead her tight shoulders, partly teasing her. Alexia wears a frown, eyebrows knitting together with an emotion she’s not sure she can name. “Ale, it’s the same game as always. Nothing has changed.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “I don’t understand why I feel like this.” She has continued to speak to Sofía, though your joint sessions have now come to a halt while you spend your time doubling as a singer and model. The therapist, try as she might, cannot evaluate the situation effectively enough. Eli and Alba have both tried to help, hoping that weekly dinners and the constant reminder about the invention of aeroplanes would ease the turmoil of Alexia’s mind. It does not. “I am so alone, Jenni.”

Nala is too small to fill the emptiness of the flat. Screens don’t allow for her to kiss you, or play with Nico. She is scared she will miss Elena’s first words.

“You don’t have to be.”

It only takes a month for Alexia to break, and it sort of works.

In Jenni’s bed, it works. Hips keening, soft pants falling from her mouth.

Quiet moans that stay locked in Jenni’s apartment.

Each time Alexia leaves, though Jenni repeatedly requests that she stays, she walks out as half a woman. She blinks back her tears and she checks her phone. When she calls you – not a video call – you are never any the wiser to the scratches down her back.

Alexia remains an island, but the sand beaches are tainted with the arrival of someone else.

In this way, she is functional.

She can do sex. She can deal with borderline romance. She can fill the space that you are tearing open with every passing minute spent in that god-awful country you insist on calling home. She can fix it a little bit with Jenni.

She tells herself that it does not mean anything more than a bandage means to a wound. Who wears the bandage once the gash has healed?

Where does she put the used bandage?

Why is she focused on bandages?! She’s having an affair. It’s not an affair! (It is.) Alexia doesn’t… quite… wanttoadmititjustyet.

…

The buzz of your phone is the final push that gets you to conclude the current interview you are trapped in. Before checking what the notification is, you glance at the time. You have half an hour before you need to pick up Nico, and your parents said they would drop Elena home once they returned from London Zoo.

Alexia: Jenni has had a really good idea

It’s an intriguing text amongst the more practical ones that oil the mechanics of managing the distance. Tonight, Barcelona play their last match of the season. After this, she’ll be flying out to London. You have missed her. The last time you saw her in person was after Barcelona embarrassed Chelsea in Gothenburg. Elated and filled with pride, it was incredibly nice to have the biggest room in the hotel to yourselves. Her medal was almost as beautiful as her.

You: Go on��

Alexia: Just draw a heart on Nico’s hand from me porfa. You’ll see.

You slide into the driver’s seat of your newest self-indulgent car; a Porsche. Momentarily distracted by a camera flash, your turn onto the main road is a little risky, but you manage to make it to the school in time to collect your son.

“Was he good?” you ask his teacher as she hands you Nico’s book bag. You take in the sight of him: hair messy, school uniform stained though they require the little ones to wear aprons for most of the day. “It’s a little different here. I’m hoping that he’s enjoying himself.”

“Our new assistant is from Spain,” says the teacher with a small, tired smile, batting her long eyelashes at you. “We had to pry him off her.”

You let out a laugh. “He misses his mum.”

“He’s extremely intelligent. He knew to speak Spanish to her and English to us.” Though your grasp of Spanish is near-fluent after such reluctance from your wife to try English, you know that the two-year-old has a talent for juggling the three languages he is growing up around. You’re proud of him. “You shouldn’t worry about him. And, speaking of, we have a parents’ coffee morning just around the corner. It’s always great for the parents to get along – it helps the school feel even more like a family. Will it just be you attending?” Nico’s teacher is around your age, and you can smell her rose perfume that mingles with the soft hint of ready-mixed paint. She has deep, brown eyes, and she is definitely flirting with you.

“Next week, right? I’ll have to check with my wife.”

It’s then that a toddler-sized hand grips your fingers and tugs. “Mama, me voy,” he groans; something akin to Alexia’s impatience. It reminds you of when you used to go shopping and she’d herd you out with the threat of getting in the car and driving away. “Venga.”

“One sec, sweetheart.” There are countless ways in which you miss Alexia. “My wife and I would love to come.”

Her smile does not falter on her lips, but there is a greyish disappointment that dulls the warmth of her irises. You smile as you turn your back and lead Nico to the car. You are so excited for Alexia to complete the broken puzzle.

You melt when she kisses the heart drawn onto her hand when celebrating her goal. Nico copies her, lips pursing and sloppily mimicking the action on a similar heart. “For you, sweetheart,” you tell him as he settles back into your side, careful not to jostle Elena who has fallen asleep on your chest (the therapist did wonders for you).

“It was for you,” Jenni tells Alexia after the match. Her goal is now serving as the move Alexia feared she’d make. They have changed and been massaged and done the media the are required to do (women’s football is growing): they are free to roam Barcelona if they so wish.

Her flight is tomorrow evening – “I have a flight tomorrow evening.”

“Come over tonight.” It isn’t a question, yet it is not quite a command. Mapi passes the two of them, eyes narrowing at the way Jenni has wrapped her hand around Alexia’s wrist. The defender is aware that something is going on, though it breaks her heart to imagine Alexia ever doing that to you. Not knowing they are being watched, Alexia steps in; cups Jenni’s face, brushes her cheekbone with a stroke of her thumb Mapi knows is meant for her wife. Mapi’s stomach lurches. She feels sick.

“I need to…” It’s not a ‘no’. “Jenni.” She hates that it is not a ‘no’.

“Ale.” There’s a beat. Mapi blinks twice, shakes her head, and backs away. “I’ll miss you, you know?”

…

Jenni doesn’t seem to mind when, the next day, blurry pictures of you on a family outing make rounds through the tabloids she usually doesn’t read. The fact that, up until now, no one has known that your wife is Alexia Putellas has no effect on her. She was stupid for thinking the last six months meant something. Winning together, losing together. Sleeping together.

In this deal, Alexia has fucked over both women who love her. Except, you don’t know. She hasn’t told you, though Jenni had hoped for it secretly – hoped Alexia chose her – and it is obvious. Obvious to Jenni, who is well acquainted with the blonde hair in the wings of your concert at the O2. Obvious to Jenni, who refuses to think of herself as the other woman.

She consults Mapi.

Mapi, who she has come to shamefully realise already knows.

“I can’t believe the two of you.” The defender is clear in her distaste and disappointment and, honestly, her disgust. “But I am not going to be the one to break that poor girl’s heart.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

What is she asking? What does she want from this utterly useless conversation?

“Mapi.” Jenni closes her eyes, but she sees two faces instead of darkness. Nico. Elena. She’s Elena’s godmother. You decided that – convinced Alexia to choose her best friend over her younger sister, told your wife that there’d be another for Alba to corrupt. “Mapi, I love her. I don’t know what to do.”

“She loves her wife.” The next sentence proceeds to brutally remind Jenni who that isn’t. “Tell her you’re done. Find someone else. Anyone but her.”

That is Jenni’s resolve, because she knows that Mapi is right.

…

June, July, and August pass with bliss.

Everyone says that you are a beautiful couple with beautiful children. Alexia beams with pride as she flaunts her practised English, and gladly claims ownership of Nico when he wins a prize on speech day. Every child in Reception is awarded something but that doesn’t stop her from boasting.

She explores the country with the children while you shack up in the recording studio, and brings hugs and kisses (and Red Bull) every evening after dinner. The visits are what reminds you of the sun Alexia brings, especially as the warmth follows her from Barcelona and London is blessed with golden days. Dog days.

“This isn’t permanent.” Alexia looks up from her phone, comfortable in your bed. The house in Highgate has flecks of Spain woven into the decor now, and you like it that way.

You climb into the bed beside her, and her arm lifts so that you can snuggle into her chiselled stomach (wow, she has been working hard this season). “What’s Jenni saying?” you ask, following your statement and hoping you’ll get her attention. She presses her phone screen into the duvet before you can translate the message – it is too long of a paragraph for you to handle. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that this isn’t permanent.”

Alexia, over the past few months, has been the most affectionate, loving, amazing person with the same smile and giggle you married. You thought she had disappeared and was replaced with stern, career-focused Alexia Putellas, jugadora del fútbol. You were wrong.

“I’m thinking January is when we’ll come back. Nico’s English will survive.” Your parents are going travelling. They’ve never been on the Orient Express before. “I want to be with you.”

It is a good thing Jenni has just broken up with her.

“I love you,” you continue. “So much.”

Alexia hums. Her heart breaks, and she does not know for whom. “¿En serio?” She is happy, she thinks. Certainly, she is glad that the four of you will be reunited.

You are.

January 2022 ruins things for Jenni Hermoso. She calls Pachuca back.

#barca femeni #woso fanfics #woso x reader #woso #fc barcelona #woso imagines #mapi leon #jenni hermoso #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas

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podcastgirlsweek · 5 months ago

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Next week!

We've got one week to go, and I'm so excited! Podcast Girls Week is a week long prompt-based event where fans are encouraged to create works celebrating their favorite podcast women. The event will take place on July 8-14.

Ready to post? We'll be using the #podcastgirlsweek tag here on tumblr, and you can already start adding works to the currently unrevealed 2024 Podcast Girls Week collection on Ao3.

Monday: What about sad wet cat women? Highlight a podcast starring women in the leading role(s).

Tuesday: This too is yuri... Spotlight a F/F ship (or platonic or familial relationship between women if that’s your preference).

Wednesday: WIP Wednesday! We all have art/fic/meta we’ve been meaning to get to. This is your day to finally commit (as long as your WIP is about podcast women, of course.)

Thursday: Nobody understands her like I do… Recognize a woman from a podcast you think is niche and/or underappreciated.

Friday: God forbid women do anything. Celebrate a female villain. Defend your #problematic fave.

Saturday: Self-indulgence Saturday! Make something you’ve really wanted to make but haven’t because you thought it was too self-indulgent, niche, or silly.

Sunday: Free space!

Have questions? Check out the FAQ. Join the Discord while you wait!

Finally, you are always welcome to tag or @ this blog if you’re posting content about podcast ladies, and I will happily reblog it!

#ofc ao3 is down rn lol (ao3 why do you hate women) but that's ok. start posting to the collection when it's up again

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yuurivoice · 8 months ago

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Saw a goofball post about ASMR Roleplay, romantic plots, narratives, etc. and so on.

Let me share some of my philosophy with you as someone in this game for 7 years, 150k subs on YouTube, and who turned this into a lucrative business for himself. I say all that not to flex, but to assure you that maybe I know a little bit about what I'm talking about.

Audio Roleplays, ASMR Roleplay, etc and so forth is not some sort of rigid, strict thing. If you believe that content in this niche has to adhere to strict rules, structure, and expectations, you've already entered into this with strange expectations because there is such a vast array of ways you can go about presenting this content.

Some of it is slice of life moments in time with an assumed relationships between character and listener. Before narrative audios started to pick up steam, or rather, a handful of folks (myself included) developed followings centered on original characters and stories, the vast majority of creators in this space were just doing snippets of experiences. And, in case you were unaware, that approach is wildly successful. Boyfriend Experiences, audio smut, etc. has a much wider appeal at this time because a listener can drop right in and enjoy it.

If you have somehow deluded yourself into thinking that every audio has to adhere to strict narrative rules, be defined by conflict, or things happening beyond whatever the vibe calls for, you're willfully putting yourself and the niche in a box. Which is fine, but seeing people piss and moan about it is strange.

My approach has been to blend narrative series along with one-shots. One-shots serve as super self indulgent audios that aren't tied to the narrative and allow listeners to engage with some of their favorite characters they fell in love with in the narrative without furthering the plot.

Sometimes I play the game, explore tropes and clichés that are popular for the sake of taking a crack at it. Because it brings in new listeners who then become fans of my narrative work and creates genuine supporters of my passion projects.

And ya know? It fucking works. It works really well. I can drop a very straightforward, stripped down comfort audio with Alphonse like I did today and move listeners to tears. And then we can continue on with BitterSweet when I'm good and ready. It keeps the channel running, keeps the audience engaged, and keeps me working.

The bigger point here is that creators should be able to approach their work as they see fit, without concerns about goofballs with strange expectations and standards dictating to them what is and is not valid. You wanna know what's valid? Creating shit that you like, that the people who support you like. However you achieve that is all good in my book.

Having some goofy ass superiority complex about how people play pretend with pretty voices is strange behavior. I'm proud that my community has never flung that kind of nonsense around, and I'm speaking on it to affirm that kind of stance for the folks who rock with me.

If you're a listener who has recently stumbled into this niche, I implore you to explore, listen to others, find what you like and enjoy it because you enjoy it. There are countless people making audio content these days and there's no wrong way to do it, never has been. There's something for everyone, and if someone tries to tell you otherwise, be wary.

I'm not about negative nonsense, not about tribalism or putting down one person over another. Lift up your faves and share why you appreciate them and their style. But petulant bickering and shitting on others because of something as trivial as audio content? Nahhhh. If I catch anyone spouting nonsense like that in my name, I try and snuff it out as fast as possible because that's not how my shit is built.

If you are someone who fucks with me and my work but has had some opinions like that, I implore you to chill because none of this has ever been that serious. I want people to enjoy what they want to enjoy because for the love of fuck, life is too short to try and grandstand over this silly little niche. Or please get all the way away from me and my people.

Deuces. ✌️

#asmr roleplay #audio roleplay #yuurivoice #feels like we went years without nonsense like this

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weebsinstash · 7 months ago

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I try try try try TRY (unless I'm intentionally being self indulgent) to not give Reader too many similarities or hobbies as myself

But oh my god an Author Reader, whether an actual author or a self published small time fanfic writer such as myself, really does have so much potential for Hazbin pairings and ideas

Like for example if you think of my poly radiostatic idea from before, then you would have Vox representing video, Alastor representing audio, and Reader representing the written medium/scripts symbolically, rounding out a perfect trio, with your skills inherently tying into both of their mediums while also being uniquely different

There's the obvious and juicy potential of porn author Reader catching Valentino's eye and him liking your work or seeking you out after reading something of yours online, OR you already being a cute lil employee of his and he's snooping on your laptop one day and finds loads and loads of kinky goodness he didn't know you had in you

I've even thought of Reader writing horror novels and other "normal books" and Alastor is absolutely thrilled by this, loves reading your works regardless of how skilled you are in terms of like the more technical things like prose or symbolism or whatever, and THEN he finds out you also write smut and he's just :) immediately wanting to put a stop to that. Oh honey you mean you... waste your time putting your name on such... filthy content to be read by complete strangers? Especially men? Oh no no no, he can't have that at all. Doesn't want you writing it, doesn't want you READING IT, unless it's "tasteful" enough, which, by his standards probably means the most vanilla, barely described missionary sex between two married individuals--

Maybe your skills and descriptors and visualization can directly translate into certain illusionary powers, either creating visions or temporary manifestations of things. You could sit and talk with Lucifer about all the different sights you've seen on Earth, going to parks with your dad as a kid, feeding the geese and their fluffy yellow goslings, allow him to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, feel a lovely lakeside breeze...

You could tell all your Hotel buddies or new Hell pals about where you grew up, or places you've been, things you've seen, stuff you've done, and SHOW it to them. It'll make those who have died miss being alive and seek out your company for the nostalgia, and those who have never seen Earth all the more eager to talk to you and learn even more...

#hh #yandere hazbin hotel #yandere x reader #tbh i keep having self indulgent thoughrs of a reader who can still connect to earth internet but thats for another time #sinprompts #catch me out here hey vox you ever hear of Spider-Man. lets watch one of my favorite movie trilogies cbdkdbdb

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erisweekofficial · 3 months ago

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We're thrilled to shine a light on @zenkindoflove!!! Amanda is an absolute gem in the Elucien fandom AND Eris fandom and has also blessed us with Alexius, her incredible OC for her Eris x OC fics.

Alexius stands out as one of the few male OCs in the community, and the dynamic between him and Eris is nothing short of captivating. Think forced proximity, delicious yearning, witty banter, political intrigue, and all the tension you could dream of. You can see them in both Summer Heat (which has Elucien) and Pull Me in Deeper, which... y'all you gotta read this asap😍🤭🥵 Also the mods are begging you to read Taste of You, a short and delightfully smutty one shot.

And PLEASE admire this amazing art of Alexius and Eris!

Read more to learn about how @zenkindoflove was inspired to create content about Eris AND her extremely helpful tips for writing content about him. (We're taking notes)

What inspired you to start creating content about Eris? I became curious about writing Eris after he was featured in some of my Elucien fics. When I started my multichapter Elucien fic Summer Heat, I decided that I would give him a male love interest in that fic and create an OC - which ended up being Alexius who you see featured in all of my Eris work. I originally intended for it to be a background relationship, but I decided to experiment and write the scene of their first meeting (a very smutty scene) just to do some character exploration. I didn’t intend to include it in the fic, but then once I wrote it, I knew that it was something special and Eris x Alexius became a true B storyline in that fic with a fully fleshed out love story. After that, I wanted to expand and write fics that focused on them which I've written several now and more to come for Eris Week! It's a bit niche. Hardly anyone writes Eris x Male OC but I'm obsessed now.

What's your favorite piece you've created featuring Eris and why?

That would be my Eris x Alexius multichapter fic - Pull Me in Deeper. I love it because it was a way for me to explore Eris’ character when he is out of the watchful eye of his father and others in Prythian. It’s also just a fun action/adventure/romance story and I got to explore more lore and character building for my OC Alexius as well. Alexius was designed to be, in my opinion, the perfect person for Eris and that means often standing in contrast to a lot of his personality traits and pushing him outside of his comfort zone. So it was an incredibly fun dynamic to explore. And it’s two gay men who are on a quest to find out (*spoilers*) if unicorns exist XD.

How do you approach writing dialogue for Eris?

I tend to lean into Eris being more careful with his words - so he is sharp, concise, and efficient in his word choice. Depending on who he’s sharing a scene with and the context, he can be severe and short or he can be long-winded and eloquent. And of course, he has banter and jabs a plenty. So I try to balance all those sides of him depending on the context.

Do you have any advice for other creators wanting to make Eris content?

Eris inhabits a unique space in canon where he is truly a free agent when it comes to relationships. So, I would recommend if you want to write romances with Eris to lean into self-indulgence and write the pairing/story you really want to tell and try to let go of what you think will be popular. And if that ends up being Eris x OC rather than a canon character, know that it can actually be such a rewarding experience even if you don’t have a built in audience. Creating an OC to pair with Eris has been immensely fun and has broadened my creativity. Eris is a complex, interesting character with so many layers and building someone to fit him and find out what is underneath all of those layers can lead you down quite an obsessive path. But a fun one.

Please give us a name for one of Eris’s Brothers

Kian. He is the third oldest and is more of a scholarly type. Now that second brother Conan is dead, he is next in line after Eris.

Please give us a name for one of Eris's Dogs.

Lithia. She just had puppies in PMID and Eris is worried about her.

#eris vanserra #eris acotar #pro eris vanserra #high lord eris #eris x oc #autumn court heir #acotar #autumn court #eris #eris vandaddy

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proudproship · 1 year ago

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Not so friendly reminder that creating "dark" or "taboo" fiction can be a sign of childhood trauma!

More below the cut. Warning: long post.

TW: Mentions of trauma, child abuse, and paraphilias

Hi. I'm someone who studies psychology and sociology, and someone who also happens to have an interest in this shipping discourse stuff.

So, back to what I said a few paragraphs ago: Creating "dark" or "taboo" fictional content can be a sign of childhood trauma.

How?

When a child goes through something they consider traumatic, their brain will play the situation on repeat subconsciously, which can cause hypervigilance and symptoms of PTSD.

A common sign of PTSD in young children is that they will reenact their trauma with things like dolls, drawings, figures, and basically any other thing they can use to express their thoughts.

For example, a child who has gone through physical abuse may reenact similar things with their toys, such as making their dolls hit or yell at each other.

This symptom isn't limited to children, though. It is a symptom closely related to the presence of flashbacks and nightmares.

Many artists will create a "self-insert" character, "sona," or a character who is otherwise much like it's creator; when an artist creates a character like this and also has past trauma, their symptoms may reflect onto their character.

Projecting yourself onto characters can happen with other characters as well, even if you didn't make the character.

This is a healthy symptom. It shows that the brain is willing to become stronger from their trauma.

Reenacting trauma in ways that aren't harmful can help the brain process what happened to them, and can even help them deal with their trauma directly.

In order to heal trauma, you must know what your trauma is; you can't heal a wound you don't know you have.

While dark fiction creators are indulging in positive healing mechanisms, certain people will shun them for doing so.

"Antishippers" claim to be the "heroes" and to support healing, even though the thing that makes someone be considered and antishipper is if they're "anti healing through fiction."

Antishippers will throw the same ableist rhetorics around by claiming "if you ship adult x child you're a pedophile!" or "if you have age gap ships (even if both are consenting adults) you're a pedophile!"

This, not only is it hurting trauma survivors (especially those who have been harmed by those with paraphilic disorders), it is hurting EVERY disabled person.

Armchair diagnosis is not something anyone should do.

It is when there is little to no evidence that the condition exists within a person, though people still throw labels onto them to make them seem like they're a "bad guy." (Usually.)

This is also hurting people with actual paraphilias. Paraphilic disorder is real condition characterized by intrusive thoughts of a (usually abnormal or harmful-if-acted-on) sexual nature.

Even if someone claims to not be ableist but still demonizes and villainizes paraphilias, they're ableist.

Ableism is ableism.

And before an anti decides to call me a "pedo-apologist," go right ahead! You don't know what you're saying anyways.

There is a difference between a criminal and a disabled person.

Proship people do not support abuse. Anyone who claims to be proship but still supports abuse is NOT proship.

---

Of course anyone who makes dark content doesn't have to have past trauma.

There are many people who make dark content that don't have what they'd consider trauma, or think their trauma is unrelated to the content they create.

What if they did experience something traumatic in the future?

They'd be able to cope with it better, because they'd seen it in fiction before, so they'd know the impact of it, and how they could handle it.

Of course, not everyone who indulges in fiction will be able to handle it, though.

However, no matter if they have past trauma or not, assume the best when it comes to content creators.

They're creative and strong, and we should be thankful that they're adding onto fandom culture by just existing and doing what they love.

All people, no matter what fictional content they create, are beautiful in their own way and should be met with kindness and compassion.

Do not go out of your way to harass/abuse innocent people.

Do not go out of your way to be ableist towards content creators and content consumers.

---

Thank you for reading my long post, I hope it helped at least a bit.

Have a great day/night and stay safe, no matter your taste in fiction.

Feedback is appreciated, and reblogs are encouraged.

#tw trauma #tw abuse #tw paraphilia #proship #proship please interact #profic #anti anti #comship #proship safe #childhood trauma #para safe #reblog please

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souglias · 8 months ago

Text

Remember To Throw Your Expired Milk [GINTOKI]

Just because an era has passed, doesn't mean everything from then is lost.

c/w: self-indulgent, may have some timeline inaccuracies, mentions of the Joui War, mentions of injuries and scars

Gintoki x gn!reader (reader is implied to be smaller than him for a small part)

word count: 4.7k words (I'm sorry guys)

note: This fic serves an outlet for me, so when I mean self-indulgent, I really mean it!! Please let me know if you think I missed any content warnings. Border is a cropped frame from the Gintama The Final movie :)

cross-posted on AO3 (accessible from my profile)!

All likes and reblogs are appreciated!

The morning before you leave for the Joui war is a chilly autumn, with the last leaves barely hanging onto their branches. The four of you were to leave together: You, Gintoki, Takasugi and Katsura.

This particular morning, it is just you and Gintoki in the abandoned house that Takasugi and Katsura also lived in. Both of them have gone out for a bit. You didn’t know for what, but the house feels a little empty without the two.

Gintoki is keenly aware of you standing behind him, your eyes burning holes into his hands that are tightening his headband. He is about to attach his sword but decides to drop his hands to his sides instead, shaking them.

With his back still facing you, he spits, "Go back to Edo tonight. You have no use on the battlefield."

The monotonous banter, usually akin to a relentless fly, stings this time. It takes only a moment for him to realise the possible weight of his words. Tentatively, he looks over his shoulder at you.

Gintoki doesn't know if he is more than a friend to you, but he would carry all your burdens and sorrow if it meant you wouldn’t enter the battlefield with them. If he has to choose his life or yours, he will choose yours. He would do anything if it meant that you would tease him about his natural perm or jab him playfully at his sides again.

So, when he meets your unwavering yet melancholic gaze, he breaks the eye contact that barely lasts. His feet become a little heavier each time he sees you with that face. The more he trudges forward, the more he has to lose.

"I'm not useless. You know I can fight. Didn’t know you had such a shit impression of me."

You can, and you fight well.

“But you don’t need to fight. You should protect your ass when you can and live. You’ve always been a scared kid anyway. Oh, who was the one who used to be intimidated by me?”

You retort back, but there’s no bite in it. “Shut your ass trap. I’m not chickening out now. You sound like the one who’s scared now.”

Gintoki’s heart is trembling. He sees the grim reaper preparing for its shift to make rounds and he does not want to see you among a pile of corpses.

He flicks your forehead, takes your headband anyway and wraps it around your head. You too, carry the same pent-up fury from the Kansei Purge as everyone else. You have your grievances to air in your way too. Hell, if you asked him not to fight, he would have called you an idiot and ignored you.

His arms hover around your head as he ties a knot securely at the back of your head. Your head is almost on his chest, and his mind wanders to how close you are to him.

“It hurts.”

“Ah, sorry.”

His hands move to loosen your headband, but you rest one hand on his forearm to stop him. You stare straight into his chest and your free hand fidgets with the side of your pant leg. Gintoki realises that you are thinking about so much more than the headband.

If he could even be audacious, he thinks he knows what you are thinking of.

He tries to think of something to say. For a split moment, he even considers a hug. Even though it’s not something he has ever been good with. But before he gets to do anything at all, Takasugi creeps up from behind him.

“I can’t believe you guys. Getting all touchy-feely before the fight?”

Gintoki immediately steps back, creating some distance between the two of you. He hurls some insults at Takasugi and the two of them bicker. When Katsura returns, instead of breaking up the fight, he joins in their nonsensical argument that is not even about the two of you anymore.

You take in this scene and etch it in your mind. This is the perfect time to have time halt if it is ever possible.

The four of you set out when it was time. As you attach your sword to your side, Gintoki comes up to you with his faux nonchalance. His eyes wander everywhere for a bit, one of his hands rubs the back of his head and the other seems to be lost on what to do. "You already know this, but do me a favour and buy me some strawberry milk on your next trip to the convenience store again. Keep them in the fridge.”

He pauses as he watches your face shift from confusion to understanding.

“It has to be the Azuri brand one! Don't you dare drink it."

Your hand resting on the handle of your sheathed sword tightens.

“Okay, you better fucking come for it.”

Gintoki catches you with that melancholic smile again. He bumps your arm gently with his fist. Noticing you walk with less of a drag in your feet, he assumes it is good enough.

(You are always so difficult for him.)

Sometime towards the end of the Joui war, when the bodies all start to pile up and the soldiers are all weary, he loses sight of you. His eyes can no longer find the silhouette he has become so familiar with and his ears cannot find the rhythm of your steps that he has memorised by heart. You do not return to base when night falls.

The voices all say you’re dead and gone, but Gintoki tries to protect the flickering flame of hope in his heart as he continues to fight. You promised him a carton- no, cartons of strawberry milk. You are far from stupid to take a promise to the afterlife with you.

But when the Joui war ends, he disappears, just like everyone else. Along with the dying fire in his heart that he wilfully thought he could protect. Hope is a heavy thing to carry after all that has happened.

The Amanto, who had kept you in a dark room for what felt like weeks, releases you into a world you are no longer familiar with. You find out that it’s only been days and that you were originally to be executed the next day.

The sky is cluttered with more spaceships and the sun feels a little more cruel than you knew it to be. You walk with no aim, looking back now and then, thinking that you hear familiar voices. It goes on till the sight of the convenience store you frequented with your friends slowly pulls you back to reality. The weight of your emotions kicks in when you hear the welcome chime of the store. Your wounds start to weep and your muscles burn as you limp towards the refrigerator of cooled drinks.

With a throat full of screams you bite back, you place a few cartons of strawberry milk from the barren refrigerator of the convenience store into your arms. Large ones to keep in the fridge, small ones in the event he wants to bring it out. The counter staff asks you if you are okay while he packs your purchases, but you simply brush him off.

As you drag your unwilling feet into the town that spells a lonely journey into the future, the carton of strawberry milk treads too to its expiration date.

(How naive of you, to think Edo would be the town you could call home with everyone you cared about and the one man you loved.)

You wander within the city after you receive treatment, searching for a sign of anyone you know. Eventually, you traverse out of Edo.

Whenever someone mentions the Four Heavenly Kings, you find your spirit to be lifted, only to be let down without fail. It is a name that strangers use so freely and carelessly. The four you know are now only legends, reduced to mere tales. They are unreachable, even as someone who has grown with them. You start to think maybe they are dead. Maybe you have just been searching for a time that has ceased to exist.

(Besides, you may have escaped death when you were released, but you think a part of you died that day too.)

It’s a long time before you force yourself to get your shit together. When you return to Edo, you see wanted posters of Katsura everywhere, the corners already peeling. One, hangs on by a small strip of tape, at a lamp post outside a humble ramen shop on the outskirts. You get a job at this ramen shop, and you stare at Katsura’s mugshot as you work until the poster gets blown away one day. With your pay, you get by and live in a simple rented apartment nearby.

When you finally bump into Katsura himself, you think you’re seeing the distant light at the end of the winding tunnel. He manages to fill you in on a bit, but takes off soon due to his predicament. The bare, discreet conversation you have with him ends up doing the opposite of what you hoped, whiffing out the little hope you carried instead. Sakamoto is assumed to be in space, which makes you a little relieved knowing he’s living his dream. But, the fact that the whereabouts of Gintoki and Takasugi are still uncertain makes you feel you’re still at square one.

Despite the time that has passed, you still see Gintoki in many things. The Shounen Jump on the shelves. Anyone with their permed hair, even if it’s clearly artificial. And especially those fucking cartons of strawberry milk you keep. They are an anchor to your past and their tarnished, rusted edges dig into your skin. You want to throw them out so bad, but you can never bring yourself to. You stay at square one with these rotting cartons for the passing seasons.

On a chilly winter afternoon with snow that’s taking its time to fall, you find Gintoki when you pass through Kabukicho. Walking past Snack Otose, you catch a glimpse of a head of silver in your peripheral vision.

You don’t recall when this… Yorozuya Gin-Chan came to be above Snack Otose. But you always pass Kabukicho in a hurry. Maybe it has always been there.

An old lady talks to him at his door, blocking him from your view on the ground floor. But you wouldn’t mistake that natural wavy perm of silver, even though all you see are strands peeking out from the sides of the old lady.

When she walks off with a face of frustration, you withdraw into a nearby alley in a flurry. You take in the scene of Gintoki with his exasperated look. He scratches his head a little and sighs, before he goes back inside. You take it as your sign to leave.

(Gintoki sees you. And he isn’t ready to talk to you either. Not with the way your fists clench. He immediately guesses what you’re feeling, if you have not changed immensely into someone different. He shakes away the urge to approach you and convinces himself again that just knowing that you are alive and warm is enough. He is content.)

The snow does not stop even when night falls. When Gintoki returns home, he turns the television on and stretches out with his feet propped up on his work desk. The doorbell rings and he sits up. His heart throbs, in anticipation for a certain someone. He tames it. Expectation is a potential recipe for disappointment.

When he opens the door, he finds you carrying two plastic bags. Your hands are very tightly wrapped around the handles. You refuse to look up at him.

“What? Asshole crawled back up from their grave? Not happy with what you got?”

You enter the house wordlessly and he shuffles out of your path. You drop the bags on the coffee table, causing a loud thud to resound in the room.

“Hey hey, the landlady downstairs is going to complain. She already came up bitching about the rent earlier this afternoon-”

“I owe you something. Did you forget?”

You pull a small carton of strawberry milk out of the bag and set it on the table. It is worn from weather and time. You rip open the top of the carton and the straw gets yanked out of the plastic, soon finding itself in the opening.

Shoving the carton into his chest, you gather the courage to look him in the eye. The carton starts to wrinkle even more from your tightening grip. You hold it tighter, as if it would stop your tears from welling.

He notices the expiry date printed on the carton, which was more than one and a half years ago. His hand wraps around yours and he doesn’t let you slip them out.

“I don’t forget what people owe me that easily. Even if I died, I would demand for the guardians of hell to arrange a delivery to get them from you.”

Your grip loosens a little when you notice the soft, subtle smile on his face. There’s a lump in your throat again and you take a few deep breaths to stop it. The sound of the television fills the silence between the two of you for a bit.

“A little less than a year ago, I crossed paths with Zura. He told me both of you disappeared and didn’t know where you were.”

The next few words almost escape him. It makes you feel small and helpless to say it, even though he was right in front of you. “I thought maybe you died.”

A stray tear streaks down your cheek. He gently pries the milk from your hands and sets it down on the table.

(He thought you died too. Sure, without realising it, he started to carry hope in his heart again. But it felt like the weight of the world sometimes, and he had to carry it by dragging it across the ground. The possibility of you being six feet under rang so loud in his mind.

It only became lighter when he bumped into Katsura for the first time a few days ago. It was when he heard about you from Katsura. Gintoki headed down and watched you work in the ramen shop from the other side of the road. He left without approaching you. He didn’t know what he was going to say to you. Besides, seeing him could reopen old wounds and he didn’t want to do that to you. And just maybe, he was a little bit of a coward when it comes to you.

But he guesses it is all futile. You found him after all.)

With his thumb, he brushes your cheek. You notice scars on his arm that you don’t ever recall him having.

“You worry too much. It takes a lot to kill me.”

“But it hurt, didn’t it?”

It did. Even now, the wounds on his soul throb a little. He thinks he’s underestimated how much he missed you. “They’re just scratches.”

You inch towards him and put your arms around him for a hug. He tenses up at your touch, but he manages to loosen up and pats your back gently until you stop crying.

“Did you cry like that when you found Zura?”

“No.”

A stray smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t waste your tears on Zura.”

“So you’re saying it’s worth it to cry for you?”

Gintoki’s eyes dart off in another direction. “No. Don't cry for me again.”

The way his sentence seemingly hangs thickens the air between the two of you. He scoffs and sits down on the sofa. Refusing to make eye contact with you, he rubs the back of his head and frowns.

He is still the Gintoki you committed to your memory and love. Even as time passes, he still has the same habits. Even though his fashion sense has changed, you still see him adorn the same shades. You can still see the pureness of his soul even with the haze of time. Despite the tears, you find a hearty laugh rising up your throat. So you let it out.

He freezes upon hearing your laugh and realises that he has not heard something so genuine from you for so long, even from before the two of you parted.

As he runs his fingers through his natural perm for the last time and stands up, he suggests, “Let’s go to the supermarket. We should get new cartons.”

You glance at the clock. “Sorry, maybe not today. It takes a while to get to the supermarket and I need to get back to my apartment too. I live on the outskirts.”

“I’ll send you back. I have a scooter now.”

“Wow, I assumed you couldn’t pay rent. Where did you get the money for that? Did you rob a bank? It’s well within the capabilities of the White Yaksha.”

His eyebrow twitches. “Quit yapping and move along. I bargained hard and relentlessly for a lower price.”

As both of you make your way to the scooter, you continue to make more snarky comments about how he got the scooter. When you see the scooter, you decide to make some more comments about the scooter, though you actually think it is a fine thing. He smacks you on the head, eliciting a giggle from you instead of what he thought would be a retort.

“Your home is so damned far away, you know,” Gintoki complains as he turns on the engine.

“You were the one who offered.”

Without much thought, you tease him as you sit behind him, “Then, where should I stay? With you?”

You realise what you’ve asked and you’re about to make a comment to brush it off. But Gintoki plops a helmet on your head before you can do so, and starts the scooter. As he begins to drive off, you place your hands tentatively on his waist. He throws a glance over his shoulder at you. “Hold on tight and don’t let go.”

It doesn’t take long for you to get used to your hand on him and he can feel your tense hands slowly relax. With his eyes on the road in front of him, he’s not 100% sure, but he thinks you’re leaning in a little.

(The scooter doesn’t go as fast as those flashy sports cars the rich use to zoom around town. But you still get to the convenience store a lot quicker than you expected. It’s too fast, you feel like you will never have enough time with him.

Even though he is right in front of you, the lost time makes the vast distance between the two of you so clear. It is one that you cannot cross now with your arms, even if you gathered the courage to wrap them wholly and tightly around him. The thought that he might disappear again will gnaw at you for a while.

That night, he pays for the strawberry milk. The two of you take the last two cartons of the Azuri brand he very much prefers. You take your time to sip on it during the ride, watching his wavy hair let loose in the wind and catch the lights of the slowly dwindling traffic around you.)

Gintoki gives you a face when he looks up from the grocery bag on the coffee table. His eyes fill with incredulity and his lips downturn dramatically. "What is this?"

You put up an air of innocence, teasing in a sing-song voice, "What's what?"

"THIS!"

He pulls out a carton of milk from the grocery bag with two fingers gripping it and waves it around hysterically.

"This is plain milk!"

"You're stating the obvious."

He drops the carton back into the grocery bag and yells out in exasperation, hands grasping at nothing in the air. You stifle a laugh.

"Still gives you the protein that you so absolutely love in your strawberry milk, doesn't it?"

He plops down on the sofa and crosses his arms. Eyebrow twitching, he begins a lecture.

"Listen [name]. Plain milk is not the same as strawberry milk. Strawberry milk is NOT just syrup or sugar getting added into milk."

You nod, pursing your lips so as not to let out a laugh at the bewildering he says and the ones he might say.

His doctor highly recommended that he cut down on sugar. Based on your internet searches, strawberry-flavoured milk has more sugar than plain ones. And because you love your boyfriend so much, you decide to take it into your own hands to buy plain milk which would be much better for his health. Watching him become exasperated over it is just a huge cherry on top.

Sensing that you found his reasoning ridiculous, he whines and throws himself face down onto his sofa. You don’t bother to suppress your laughter when he starts kicking his feet.

Out of nowhere, he jumps off the sofa and slides his wooden sword into his belt. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? You offered to buy it because you planned this, right? Because the doctor said I had to reduce my sugar intake.”

How dare you, his beloved, commit such an act of betrayal to him! He adds a little shout in between his rambling. Then, adds, “Sugar is life, [name]! We have to go buy them now!”

He tugs at your arm and you refuse to budge. Initially, you reason that he can’t leave the house because Yorozuya’s opening hours aren’t over yet. As he tugs harder, you start to mock him for having such a sweet tooth, how he’s weak for being unable to go by without strawberry milk and how ungrateful he is for you. He retorts back saying you shouldn’t have backstabbed your boyfriend like that, and there’s nothing sinful with having a sweet tooth. In the end, he lifts you by your waist with his arm and out of the house into the spring evening. Conscious of the looks of onlookers, you smack him on his back harder and harder till he complains about how it hurts and puts you down.

Gintoki continues to lecture you about the strawberry milk as the two of you walk to the convenience store that opened months ago. In the five-minute walk, you let him go on about the difference and hum now and then as an indication that you are listening. At the same time, you imagine the pink cherry blossom buds overhead. You imagine the falling sakura blooms around him. A mental image of the blossoms in his silver hair surfaces.

When he finishes his sentence, you comment, “I think you could be a strawberry parfait too.”

“Huh?”

It’s now your turn to talk in this walk and Gintoki sees the vision you’re having. He’s about to make a dirty joke, but you jab him at his side before he can say it.

When the two of you enter the store, he runs straight to the refrigerator. You trail behind him, already finding his arms full of large and small Maiji milk cartons although it has only been one minute.

It has become normal for Gintoki to take the Maiji brand carton without a second thought. You can no longer find the Azuri brand milk in Edo anymore, and possibly the whole of Japan. It took him a little getting used to and some whining to you, but he has come to enjoy it.

When you watch him try to arrange and squeeze everything into the basket, you think maybe your plan to help him cut down on sugar has backfired. Mans simply trying to stock up at this point. You end up having to do some convincing in that narrow aisle, with some other shoppers, for this manchild to put a few back.

From the refrigerator to the cashier and back to Yorozuya, Gintoki keeps pouting. You poke his cheek with his free hand, but all you get is a “hmph”. He’s not going to give in so easily! It takes so much more than paying for his sweets and saying he looks like a strawberry parfait!!

You think about offering to pay for his parfait, but you tell yourself not to give in to him. You want him to live a long life and die of old age, not go out way before his time in agony because of sugar.

Gintoki plops down at the corner of the sofa when the two of you return to Yorozuya. He starts reading the latest copy of Shounen Jump with one leg crossed on the sofa, sipping loudly on his milk in an attempt to irritate you. You sit on the other corner with your drink and magazine you bought yourself earlier, and you prop your feet on top of his lap. He smacks your feet once, but he lets you be as he always does. On other days, he enjoys doing it to you too.

Every now and then, you look up to see him engrossed in his manga. Sometimes when you blink, you still see images of the past versions of him with Katsura and Takasugi at his side.

You get up and give him a kiss on the cheek, before heading to the stairs outside. He’s a bit caught off guard, but you leave him to process it.

On the street downstairs, a few kids scramble around, presumably to head home. Your mind wanders to the three boys you grew up with. There are still days you think you wake from your nap in the classroom to the three boys duking it out in the dojo. But when your bleary vision in the morning clears and you notice that the ceiling above is different from the one at Shoka Sonjuku, reality settles. It’s just a ruckus made by some kids outside. You stare at the ceiling, remembering that Takasugi is at large with his new comrades. You remember that Zura now has his own faction, which both you and Gintoki reject his relentless invitations to. You remember that Shoyo-sensei is gone.

You hear the sliding door open behind you and Gintoki leans on the part of the ledge beside you.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Gintoki notices you running your finger back and forth on the grooved surface of the ledge. He places a kiss on your temple. A little hesitant at first, but he goes for it. He then shifts behind you slightly, resting his hand on top of yours. With his steady frame behind you, you lean back a little on him.

(Gintoki wonders what Shoyo-sensei would think about the two of you. Hopefully, he approves, even though Shoyo had witnessed him disturbing you in class and outside of it. Hell, Shoyo even thought Gintoki was bullying you at one point and Gintoki had gone to lengths to prove otherwise. He would also argue that he was teasing you to get you to break out of your shell. Though in hindsight, maybe he had been a little mean about a few things.)

The wish to return to the bygone days still squeezes your heart with its agony. The days that Shoka Sonjuku was your home. Its invisible hands still try to grasp at the memories that are becoming ever-distant and drifting away in the stream of time. It is always the worst when you find resemblances that you find hard to ignore.

But everyone has found their place in this new era, including you. The night he dropped you off after reuniting, he asked you’ll come to Yorozuya again. You said you’d try, but no promises because it was far. Though, as you watched his receding figure ride back into the brightly lit town you once detested, you knew you would.

You're glad you did. After all, you found a place with Gintoki. A place, in this still unfamiliar city, that you can finally bring yourself to call home again.

If you've come this far, thank you so much for reading this self-indulgent, monster of a fic <3

#sakata gintoki x reader #gintoki x reader #sakata gintoki #gintoki imagines #gintama imagines #gintama x reader #gintama #souglia.s #my gintoki lovergirl era really hit this hard #this is my saddest era too esp bc of the songs I've been listening to while writing this #now I have other monsters to face aka my final assignments #still can't believe I spit out 4.7k worth of words for this man #I am very downbad for him #when I have the time watch me yap about the themes and shit and stuff I couldn't include

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femmefighter · 8 months ago

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Incoming rant - please scroll past to avoid this downer if you want.

I'm so disappointed in all of the events/fanart/servers/works etc that treat the Ahsoka series like the WolfWren or the SabEzra show. I got so heavily into Star Wars because of one character: Ahsoka. I was so freaking excited when they announced her live action series, and even more excited when, on viewing the trailer, saw that it was going to centre around multiple strong female characters! Seriously, I would jabber on to even non-Star Wars friends about how excited I was about the push of female characters in this show. And awesome female characters at that!!

I go looking for fan-created merch, be it artwork or clothing etc, and I am left so freaking wanting because everything is WolfWren. I am so starved for content that is of the main character of the show, I am at a complete loss at how the fandom has turned its back on such an incredible character for favour of a non-canon, self-proclaimed-toxic-yuri ship.

I know, I know, ship and let ship. I'm totally down with that. I love fandom art and fanfiction in general. I love me some gorgeous WolfWren art (not a SabEzra shipper, but that's a separate rant that we don't need to air, but I love their sibling relationship!). I might even love a bit of WolfWren fanfiction (very occasionally). And I have found one small, safe space on a server where I can safely indulge in my tiny little Sokabine tugboat of a ship (on Bo-Katan-centric server of all places, WTF? But damn I am so grateful for that space and those moderators). I know my ship is niche, (I don't know how, but anyway) I know I'm not going to find anyone who is as die-hard over my ship as I am. I expected that.

What I didn't expect was to find myself so lacking in Ahsoka-the-character content in fandom spaces supposedly dedicated to the Ahsoka show. Everyone loves a good ship, but the lack of other ships that could be celebrated from the show (NightDaughter, Herasoka, MonHera, ShinSoka, Morgbine, whatever!) I find is reflective of a lack of interest in the character traits of the individuals. To me, it seems like fans are more interested in an aesthetic than they are on histories, values and idiosyncrasies of the characters themselves.

Anyway, if you've got to the end of this rant, thank you for reading. Again, I don't mean to hate on such ships. I was actually just as excited as everyone else at how the actors validated WolfWren as a ship to enjoy, considering it was femslash fanfiction that made me feel less alone when I was a closeted teen nearly two decades ago. I'm just frustrated at the lack of space in the fandom for content that is different.

#ahsoka series #fandom rant #soz for the downer #star wars wlw #fan art #fanfiction #fandom #ahsoka tano #star wars #sabine wren #shin hati #ezra bridger

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dreamteammemes · 6 months ago

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Extremely self-indulgent "Shit People Have Said" meme: warning for language and explicit content

"Photosynthesize on the haters."

"I miss ten seconds ago when I didn't see that."

"Why does Freddy Fazbear want you so bad?"

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but if you want to make out, let's make out!"

"I went to the museum in Animal Crossing and everyone there knew you."

"The only thing that should be going into your lungs is air????"

"I'm going to name my kids Slim Shady and Draculara."

"Sometimes you just have to do ketamine with a horse."

"What? You're not coming to my tea party? (Name), I made biscuits!"

"72 virgins? Doesn't that seem like a trap to you?"

"You look like you're forlornly reminiscing about a lost lover."

"I pity you fishless fool."

"I just became conscious in the middle of saying this sentence."

"I ordered 37 Baja Blasts to impress the girl at the counter."

"(Name) is a bitch. They're a bitch on wheels."

"Who needs sleep? I've been up for eight days!"

"All birds are ducks but not all shrimp are brownies."

"You may be able to rotate my tires but can you satisfy a woman?"

"I'm married to myself. Why? I'm hot."

"I've created a situation."

"Please, call me by your name."

"I'm two much for these bitches and three much for these hoes."

"Look, the sign says I can refuse service to anyone that violates our policies, and frankly... I just really hate your vibes."

"This isn't a comedy bar; this is a Starbucks. Get your shit and leave."

"I’ve done nice things like not murder you even when I really wanted to, and this is how you repay me?"

"My hobbies include showing up in people's dreams and being dead."

"I may be a dumb bitch but I ain’t fucking stupid."

"I'm alive for two reasons. One, I was born, and two, I haven't died yet."

"No human language can describe the disappointment I’m feeling right now."

"(Name), if you remember, I hit you with my Gucci car and I'm sorry."

"I was possessed by the devil when I said that."

"You are going to die because I'm going to kill you."

"You're nothing but a dip ass shit."

"You blacked out after laughing at your own joke."

"Sometimes you just have to let go of the steering wheel of life and drift for a while."

"My neighbors like this song so much they threw a brick through my window so they could hear it better."

"Ask your doctor if these hands are right for you."

"I'm hiding my penis because people are out of control!"

"Sure, blame the guy who's a huge idiot who causes a lot of problems again."

"You’re a liar, wow I’m getting tired of this!”

"One day I'm going to say "fight me!" and someone's just going to fucking deck me"

#rp meme #roleplay meme #sentence starters #YOU DIDNT SEE ME POST THIS TO THE WRONG BLOG #this is just shit ive said/heard over the years lol. from a variety of sources

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adventuringblind · 1 year ago

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Butterflies on You Skin

Oscar Piastri x Reader

Genre: angst and hurt/comfort

Request: No, this is entirely self indulgent

Summary: Sometimes, the coping mechanisms we create aren't the ones we need...

Warnings: graphic images if SH

Notes: I do not in any way condone SH. I used to read fics like this when I was going through it and it helped. Like somehow reading about fictional me doing it and then getting help allowed he to have those same sensations. My point being that I am struggling at the time I'm writing this and I'm determined to stay clean (almost two years!). This helps me and I hope it helps someone else out there too. Remeber you're not alone ❤️

Masterlist

People don't understand that pain can become addicting. When you've been through so much of it, all of it not by choice, choosing the pain feels like a release.

She knows it's wrong. She knows there are better ways of dealing with things. But she can't see to stop herself.

It's her way of reminding herself she has power and control. She picks where the knife goes and how deep it cuts into her skin. She chooses when and where it happens.

It was something she needed and relied on for so long. Until she met Oscar.

They were teenagers when they met. Some birthday party for a mutual friend. Both of them left feeling out of place, so they gravitated towards each other.

Phone numbers were exchanged.

They spent far too much time talking to each other. She felt that he kept her down to earth. That no matter the bad things that happened, he would be there. Even replacing the knife occasionally.

He found her intriguing. Her perspectives on life and her dreams for the future. Her head had a tendency to get stuck in the clouds, but he didn't mind. He likes listening to her talk.

When they both graduate, he invites her to his races. Watching him felt fulfilling in a way, and she likes the traveling.

Yet when she's alone. Her head is sending her to places she can't come back from. When she needs the sting she's come to crave, she's spending the night with her knife.

When Oscar finishes his f2 career and becomes the third driver for Alpine, he ends up confessing his feelings for her. Something she's been wanting to do for years but never could.

A week later, he's kissing her. Her heads find the clouds easily after that. Something about his presence and how he is so genuine clears away the hurricane that is her thoughts.

Being a third driver means Oscar does have a bit more free time. He gets to go home to see her more often. Something she's not used to.

The Australian gets home late one night. He comes in quietly since he figures she's already asleep.

Oh, how terribly wrong he is.

She'd had a fight with her family earlier that day. Her parents have never been good at communication, and they still claim they gave her a better life than what they had. Which is true, she thinks.

She has no reason to be sad.

Another reason to draw the sharp edge across her skin. Another thin red line to add to the ever growing tally.

Oscar sees the bathroom door closed and the light turned on. He hears the clatter next. He presses his ear to the door. Debating whether to make his presence known or if that would scare her more than if he waited.

The hiss of pain is what gets him. "Love? Are you alright?" All movement on the other side stops. Then the clatter again.

She hates when she gets sloppy. She knows she's gone too far, and Kscar wasn't supposed to be home until tomorrow.

She stares down at the crimson colored lines. The contents of the wounds coat her skin at dripping to the floor.

"Love? Please answer."

But she can't answer. what is she supposed to say? That her unhealthy coping mechanism is finally becoming her undoing. The she's tried to stop but the sensation is something she's learned to crave?

Oscar tried the handle. Received to find it unlocked. He opens just a small crack. He's never been one to invade her privacy.

The look of pain in his eyes makes her sob. He dosent move when he sees her. His mind trying to register what he's seeing.

How had he never noticed until now?

He can tell she’s panicking. He gently moves himself to the floor, grabbing a towel as he goes. He doesn’t say anything, just gently start to clean her up.

When he’s successfully disinfected the wounds and has bandages them up, he lead her into their room.

“I know it’s hard, but we have to talk about it.”

She just shakes her head in response. He deserves an explanation. Really, he deserves someone better.

She just tells him everything. Basks in the gentleness of his voice and warmth of his touch as she does so.

She was expecting him to leave. Her mind convinced she was unlovable in her state. After all, who could fall in love with someone who crave the sting of a knife?

But she was wrong.

Oscar was somehow filled with a new sense of purpose and they found themselves working together to help her pull through to the other side. A reminder that she is far from alone.

He’s quick to find a way to help her and when he does it feels almost magical.

The butterfly project. The goal is to not kill the butterflies.

They start small. She puts the butterfly on her hand. Just a simple doodle.

It doesn’t last long and she’s crying over the fact she killed it.

The next time around there are two butterflies. One on her and one in Oscar. His drawing take much more time. His deliberate design giving her more motivation to not ruin it.

It’s gone in two weeks and she relapses that day. Yet the fact she made it that far was an accomplishment.

Soon the butterflies are everywhere. Both their arms covered.

It became something she did when she was bored. Her hands drawing the bugs in every open surface.

It was difficult and she slipped but she was getting better.

Oscar was so incredibly proud of her. He got asked frequently about the creatures that littered his skin. He just said he liked them and so does his girlfriend.

When Oscar started with McLaren, Lando noticed them immediately. “If you ever need to talk I’m here if you want.” Oscar shoots him a confused look before remembering the lovely blue butterfly colored in with Sharpie placed in the middle of his forearm.

So she's made it to a year. Sure, she's slipped here and there, but it's nothing like it used to be. It's something to celebrate.

Oscar spends the entire day with her. Praising her acomplishment and reminding her how proud he is if her and how proud she should be of herself.

She is proud. It's something she never thought she could do. Not on her own, at least.

It's Oscar that helped her through and the butterflies in her skin.

Now she's has a permanent one. A reminder she came through to the other side. A reminder that she is not alone. Most importantly, a reminder she's loved.

Remember you're not alone.

This was somewhat based on a true story. Here's my reminder to myself every day that I'm not done yet, and neither are you. Keep fighting loves ❤️

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moonsreid2 · 2 years ago

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Doctor Who-Spencer Reid

Summary: Spencer realises that he didn't actually know the girl who sat in front of him every day as much as he thought.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x F!reader (no use of y/n)

warnings: none! just fluff, reader is a doctor who fan because I'm self-indulgent as fuck

lmk if you enjoyed :)

She sat there, like usual. Nothing different about her should have made Spencer act this way. Except for the mug she was holding, the contents held the same coffee she always made but that wasn't the reason why Spencer stopped in his tracks.

The mug was of a special blue police box, that he would have recognised a mile away, the main feature of his favourite show. It was a mug of the Tardis. Her smile sipped on the mug, drinking away like normal, but he couldn't move. He was quite literally, starstruck.

"You okay, Pretty Boy?" He didn't have to turn to know who had just spoken to him.

But he turned anyway, locking eyes with Derek instantly, "The mug, Morgan, look at the mug." He whispered.

"What's the prob-"

He was cut off before he could finish the word, "The mug is the Tardis, She likes Doctor Who? Has she ever spoken to you about Doctor Who? How didn't I know she liked the show? Why has she never told me? What Doctor do you think is her favourite? Derek why arent you stressing out about this?"

"Because, Loverboy, it's a mug." His eyebrows raised as if it was no big deal at all, but Spencer thought he was crazy. How can no one care about this? Doctor Who is one of the best shows created and no one is freaking out that the girl he has been, not so, secretly crushing on for the past two years is drinking out of a mug that's about the show.

"Thanks, Morgan, you're great help" He scoffed.

"Would either of you explain to me why you're both staring at that poor girl?" Emily magically appeared in between Derek and Spencer placing her hands on their shoulders.

"Reids freaking out because his lady is drinking out of a mug from a weird nerd show he likes" Morgan takes this opportunity to smirk while taking a sip out of his own mug. Which ended up being a terrible idea, because Emily decided this was a great time to smack Morgan over the head.

"Stop bullying the poor guy, Doctor Who is a great show" Emily defended, which Spencer was greatly appreciative of. However, she turned to him and said, "But, just go talk to her instead of staring at her, you're gonna freak her out, you moron" She pushed him towards her, which he wasn't greatly appreciative of this time.

"Hi!" Spencer smiled at her, sitting lightly on the corner of her desk.

"Hi, are you okay?" She smiled.

He rubbed the back of his neck, "Yeah, I just noticed your mug, do- do you like Doctor Who?"

"What? Oh! Yeah, i love it! Have I not told you that before?" Her smile faded slightly, realising that she never told him such an important part of her life.

"No, you, ehm haven't" He giggled slightly, and she took this opportunity to walk over to refill her coffee, which Spencer immediately followed "Did you know the regenerations were an accident?"

"Really?"

"Yeah! A faulty mixing desk made the appearance of William Hartnell overexposed to the point where it was almost white which ended right after Patrick Troughton could be put in his place!"

"It was really an accident? I would have thought they made it on purpose its such an iconic part!" She encouraged, pouring the pot into her now famous mug. "Got any more facts for me, Doctor?"

"Ehm- Sure yeah!" He nodded his head before saying "David Tennant who played the 10th doctor, had a daughter in the episode "The Doctors Daughter" who was played by Georgia Tennant, who he ended up marrying and she's also the daughter of Peter Davidson, the fifth doctor!"

"You really do know everything don't you?" She smiled at him, and Spencer thought his heart had stopped right then.

"Not really, its certianly impossible for a human to know everything but I take pride in knowing I know approximately 78% more facts than the average human." He rolled his lips inwards, into a smile, making her blush which therefore made Spencer blush even more.

"Would you want to come over one time?" She blurted, Spencer taking a back, "I- I mean to watch it with me sometime, you know and we could get to know each other better? Maybe?"

"Really? Like as a date?" Spencer immediatly regretted the words that came out of his mouth, it was obviously not 'like a date' how could he just be so stup-

"Yes Spencer," She smiled at him, "as a date"

"Y-Yeah! That would be great!"

"I'll organise a date and a time then," She says smiling as she walks away.

Spencer stood there starstruck for the second time that day and was approached by Derek and Emily again.

"You alright, kid? You look a bit shaken up" Derek smacked his back.

"My first date ever is watching Doctor who." He stated, smiling like a schoolboy, walking away still smiling.

Emily's hand immediately rose in front of Derek's chest, folding her fingers inwards several times back and forth. "Cmon, owe up"

He immediately opened his wallet and placed 50 dollars into her palm "You suck, Prentiss, you know that right." Almost shouting now as she walks away.

"Yeah but you swallow" Blowing a kiss to him, making the rest of the BAU team giggle, but the two will never know their friends betted on their relationship and they will never know why Rossi, Emily and Penelope are all 50 dollars richer.

#criminal minds #criminal minds spencer reid #spencer reid #spencer reid blurb #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x self insert #derek morgan #emily prentiss #penelope garcia #criminal minds aaron hotchner

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strawberry-cowmilk · 2 years ago

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shopping assistant

-> lucifer x mc

-> mc goes shopping with lucifer

mc's gender is not mentioned, not proof read

a/n: this is very self indulgent hehe, also I've never written the word 'bag' down so often before and yes I'm still alive and will get to requests!!

content warnings: mc kind of has certain personality traits?? as in they like to shop and go a little crazy in malls I guess, lucifer and mc are already in a relationship, soft lucifer (??), this is kinda low quality honestly

-----

Diavolo recently opened a huge indoor mall in the Devildom. It has a lot of great stores and cafès, Majolish has some serious concurrention now. You, as an avid mall enjoyer, are of course dying to visit the place but since it's so popular and newly opened, it's been insanely crowded for a good while, especially around the time most were free.

Lucifer feels like he's been neglecting you a little lately, so he decided to surprise you. He talked it out with Diavolo, you and himself now have a day off from RAD, and Lucifer is planning on taking you to the mall. Since it's at a relatively quiet time, you will at least be able to see where you're walking.

'Lucifer! How does this look?' you beamed at your lover, who was sitting on the little couch outside of the fitting room, holding five full shopping bags and a coffee. Normally, Lucifer would never be the type to carry anyone's bags. One time Lucifer had a ton of shopping to do for some RAD event and made Mammon and Beel tag along just to hold all luggage. But it's different when it comes to you, though he'll deny it anytime anyone brings it up, he just offered to hold your bags because there were too many of them for one human to hold! Totally not because this is one of his ways of saying 'I love you'. The avatar of pride eyed your outfit up and down before smirking. 'It looks great, Mc.' despite your sweet smile, you kind of feel bad for him though, watching him sit there with all those paper bags. Was he having fun too?

You called out to Lucifer while you were changing back into your clothes. 'Hey, why don't you let me carry some of the bags?' immediately you got a hard 'no' as a response. Every time you'd ask why, Lucifer had an excuse ready to go, 'there's too many of them' or 'they'd get in your way as you're searching the clothing racks'. When you paid for your clothes at the checkout, Lucifer would instantly take the bag from the cashier, who was handing it to you. Suddenly you got a great idea, you grabbed onto a part of Lucifer's arm that wasn't posing as a makeshift rack and led him to a certain store, your footsteps creating a satisfying tapping sound against the marble floor. It was subtle, but you could see the surprise in Lucifer's gaze as he stared at the shop before him, his eyes softened as he laid them upon you. Clearly he likes the record store you led him to.

'Thank you, I didn't even know this mall had such a store.' perhaps Diavolo added it just for his friend? You giggled at the almost childlike excitement that was hidden in your pride demon's expression.

'I'll hold the bag containing everything you get from here!'

'No, not a chance, Mc.'

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me x mc #obey me x reader #obey me swd #lucifer x mc #lucifer x reader #obey me lucifer x reader #obey me lucifer x mc #gn!mc #obey me fluff

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pinkkittysaw · 1 year ago

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I AM AFRAID NOT OF LEAVING, BUT BEING FORGOTTEN

*the title is part of a quote from the book Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

pairing: clive rosfield x f!reader

summary: unable to deal with your bouts of insecurity, you try to call it quits on your relationship with clive

word count: 3.5k

content: hurt/comfort, established relationship, self flagellation (talks of insecurity and self doubt/deprecation), unhealthy coping mechanisms, allusions to anxiety, extremely self indulgent

(18+) this piece is sfw but am uncomfortable with minors interacting with my work

a/n: dealing with a lot of anxiety and thoughts of worthlessness/hopelessness so i created this in hopes of alleviating some of those feelings 👍

also if you’re interested, i listened to Need 2 by Pinegrove while writing this. figured it’d help set the mood while reading

divider by @/saradika

"You're still sleeping in the bunks? Clive returned yesterday, you know." Jill teases as she sits on the edge of the bed you've chosen to occupy for the past few nights. It wasn't unusual for you to reside in the bunks whenever Clive was away on an assignment; the big bed that occupies his chambers being too spacious to bear during nights spent alone.

What was unusual, however, was that you continued to spend your evenings there after he had already returned. Having once been so eager to jump into his sturdy arms after catching wind of his arrival back at the hideaway. You were often caught running down to the pier once the ferryboat came into view, excitedly waiting for him at the dock while waving your arms like a madwoman. When Jill heard from Clive that the two of you hadn't spoken since before he left, she immediately knew something was amiss.

"I'm aware," you grumble into the pillow that you're currently holding over your face.

"Did something happen between you two?" She probes, a frown forming on her features as she scoots closer to you. "Did he hurt you? Because I swear to Founder if he-"

"No, no, no, it's nothing like that," you interrupt, removing the pillow. "He's lovely. I just..." Hesitation creeps into your voice as your words trail off. To be honest, you're not quite sure how to describe what you're experiencing at the moment. "I'm feeling...unwell." Though it's not a physical illness that ails you, you hope that your response is satisfactory enough for her to leave the conversation be.

"Have you come down with something? I can help you to the infirmary if you need."

"It's nothing that serious. I'll be alright." You give her a half-hearted smile in an attempt to reassure her. She eventually yields, though still not convinced of your words.

With a shake of her head and a heavy sigh, she rises to stand. "He'll come looking for you sooner or later." Padding across the room from your bunk to the entrance, she looks back at you before making her exit. "You can't avoid him forever."

You scoff when she's just out of earshot. Like hell you can't, you think to yourself. Wearing your self-isolation on your sleeve like a badge of honor. Whenever you wanted to disappear from people's lives, you did, regardless of how much it hurt. This time was no different.

The truth of the matter is that you were avoiding Clive; the reasons for doing so were nobody's fault but your own.

In your eyes, you were so much weaker than he, often thinking you were undeserving of a man of his caliber. He harnesses the strength to take on entire eikons, whereas you peril in comparison, so after ruminating on your feelings of worthlessness one night, you decided to call it quits, figuring that it was for the best and choosing to avoid him so you didn't have to confront your own inadequacy. Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest choice, but it was the one you decided to go with.

The next few days are spent taking on as many assignments as you can, with the hope of eluding Clive. The majority of his time was spent away from the hideout, but you could never be too careful.

Rushing over to check the alliant reports at first light and carrying on well throughout the day. From dawn til dusk, you worked yourself to the bone only to collapse in your bunk at the end of the day, dead to the world, rising early from your slumber to repeat it all again the next day.

Apparently, Clive caught on to your little scheme because, after one late afternoon, someone stood waiting for you at the pier upon your return to the hideaway.

After thanking Obolus, you make your way over to the fellow bearer to inquire about what's going on. "Clive's looking to speak with you in his chambers; he said it was urgent," she states.

"It can't wait?"

"He seemed rather insistent; best not keep him waiting."

"Of course, thank you for letting me know." You smile at her before making your way over to his chambers, grumbling to yourself. You climb the steps to his room with a pout on your face, not looking forward to the conversation awaiting you on the other side of the door.

After taking a moment to collect yourself, you extend your arm to gently knock on the door. "Come in." His voice calls out from inside the room.

You push apart the two slabs of wood separating his chambers from the main deck and step inside. He's sitting at his desk to your left, quill in hand, stripped down to just his tunic and trousers, his leathers and armor removed, while his sword rests against the wall. Fuck, you think to yourself. He must be set on staying a while. There's no escaping him this time.

You make quick work to occupy yourself with the objects scattered around the room as you move to stand in front of his desk. You're surprised to see a pile of your forgotten clothing neatly folded on the couch that sits against the opposing wall, as well as the various knickknacks you've added to his desk during your time together. Albeit an overreaction, you half expected your things to be tossed into the lake's abyss with how you were acting.

"Ah," he says as he looks up from his writing, setting down the quill. "There you are. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of having your clothes washed, should you want them back."

"But if not, I could always make space for them here."

Your eyes meet his as the statement leaves his mouth. It's an invitation, an olive branch extended to you in hopes of making peace. The implication of his words, the domesticity of it all, leaving bits and pieces of each other in one another's lives, even after all that you've done to push him out of yours, leaves a bitter aftertaste in your mouth, making you realize just how truly undeserving of his love you really are.

A mumbled "Thank you" is all you can offer him in response.

"It's no problem." He stands up from his seat; both his hands lay flat on the desk below as he peers down at you. "I've heard you've been making yourself quite scarce lately."

"Your undertaking of assignments has increased significantly. It's almost as if...you've been avoiding me." He states it like a question, trying to gauge your reaction and see if you'll give him something he can latch on to.

"That's not true," you scoff. It is true, and you both damn well know it, but you keep up the facade anyway.

He exhales the breath he was holding, easing up on the interrogation. "I admit, I've been spending more time away from the hideout, but you can't seriously expect me to believe that your behavior lately is normal."

"I haven't seen as much as a glimpse of you since before I left."

Frustration grows in your belly; you're tired of running, tired of hiding, and tired of pretending. "I can't do this anymore, Clive."

"Can't do what?"

"This. Us."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just not good enough for you... or anyone."

"I shouldn't even be here. I'm not strong enough to fight alongside the cursebreakers," you gesture into the open air. "I lack the wit to come up with strategies to help take down the Mothercrystals, and I've got as much charm as a bloody morbol."

"I've read the missives from the past few days, all of which praise you for your tact, your kindness, dedication, and care. Just because you're not on the frontlines doesn't mean you're not making an impact."

"What good is any of it?" You raise your voice. "What good is helping with crops, fetching supplies, and slaying meager monsters if it's the next day that our people are led to slaughter?"

"The imperials tighten their grip across the realm with each passing moon, and what I do in the grand scheme of things is the equivalent of sitting on my arse twiddling my thumbs. I'm about as useful as a corpse."

"ENOUGH." His voice boomed and bellowed, loud enough that people down on the main deck probably turned their heads at the sound. "Sit," he commands, pointing to the couch across the room, and you dare not disobey.

Embarrassed that you've stirred up such a fuss, you sit yourself down on the piece of furniture and hang your head low, preparing for a scolding. Not that it wouldn't be deserved; Clive has enough to worry about with the Mothercrystals and bearers, now having to also quell the insecurities that linger in your heart.

Just suck it up and do better is what you've always been told, but try and try and try as you might, you can never seem to get there. You're never enough. Can your strengths even be called strengths if there's so many out there who can do everything you do but better?

You don't bother raising your head to him as he paces back and forth, not wanting him to see another weakness of yours in the form of your tears. He gives a heavy sigh as he collects his thoughts, pinching his nosebridge while searching for the right words. "I apologize for raising my voice, but I simply cannot bear how critical you are of yourself, especially when I know for a fact that your fears are unfounded."

He marches up to where you sit on the couch, caressing your cheek and nudging your face in his direction. You can't bring yourself to meet his icy blues, knowing your heart would burst at the seams under his gaze or the kind smile that he reserves just for you. You don't deserve it, not with the way you've acted, so instead you turn your head in the opposite direction, refusing to indulge in his affections. His grip is a tad more firm as he attempts to move your face once more. You don't have the strength to resist his pull, so you let him maneuver your jaw to face him.

Tears begin to flow down your cheeks, and your lower lip wobbles as you attempt to hold in your sobs. His eyes widen as he sees the state that you're in, and with a gentle finger, he lifts your chin up.

"Will you look at me, please?" His voice isn't as strong as it once was moments before. There's a small break in his tone, almost as if he's pleading with you. Feeling exhausted now, you lift your eyes to meet his. They're not filled with anger or disappointment, but with concern, and more tears pool in your waterline as you scan his face.

"Oh, sweetheart," he whispers, bringing his thumbs to wipe away the tears spilling from your eyes before sitting down beside you. He surveys your sullen expression before pulling you into a hug. His warmth surrounds you in his embrace, and a part of you hates how secure it makes you feel.

Always relying on others to get by, you'd be dead without him, and you know it. You're a hopeless, bumbling mess trying to find your way through a dark maze.

You cry more into his shoulder, soaking through his tunic with your tears, despite your best efforts to remain unfeeling and stoic. It's all too much all at once, and his comfort only agitates the ache deep within your heart.

"Let it all out; I'm right here."

"You're safe," he murmurs in your ear, stroking a comforting hand up and down your back.

"I don't deserve you, Clive."

"You don't deserve to see me like this," you manage to choke out between sobs. The force of your crying is so violent against him that you start hiccupping and gasping for air.

He doesn't respond to your claims, not yet anyway, knowing that doing so would only rile you up more—choosing to hold you instead, rocking you slightly from side to side. He waits for you to calm down before addressing you, and you don't attempt to speak again, your shortness of breath not allowing for any more words to be uttered. You allow yourself to rest in his arms like you've done many times before, and after a short while, your wails are reduced to nothing but sniffles.

Once you've become a bit more settled, he pulls away from the embrace only to fetch a hankerchief, giving you a few minutes to collect yourself. He sits back down with you, his free hand grasping yours firmly, grounding you. The weight of his fingers interlocked with yours serves as a reminder that he's here; he's with you.

"I apologize for the outburst," you say, wiping your face down with the cloth before shifting your attention to him once more.

"No need for apologies, my love. I'd much rather you cry in my arms than continue to bottle this feeling inside you and let it fester."

You look away from him, turning toward the gaps in the wall of his chambers where the sunlight peaks through. You stare out at the lake below, watching as the black water laps at the walls of the hideaway.

Your voice takes on a somber tone when you speak next. "You deserve someone better than me, Clive, someone stronger." The air surrounding you two is still but its weight is all too heavy.

"Don't be ridiculous," he chides, his body turning to face you as he throws an arm over the backrest of the couch.

"If only I was." You let your words drift off into the ether before speaking again. "You deserve someone who can bear the weight of her own burdens, who's strong enough to not fall apart at every small inconvenience, someone who doesn't need to run into the comfort of your arms like a petulant child. I'm not worth everything you do for me—the kindness, the generosity, the love—none of it."

He scoots closer to you, bringing a hand to grasp at your hip, his thumb stroking it back and forth. "Is that not my right as your lover? To see you at your weakest and most vulnerable and still love you anyway?"

"I'm nothing, Clive. It's been that way since the day I was born. I'm not worth trying to save, just deadweight that needs to be tossed overboard."

"You think I'm a sinking ship, then? that I can't ‘handle’ you?" He gestures in the air.

"I can barely handle myself. Let's just end this before it's too late."

"Don't I have a say in the matter? You're making all these decisions about us without so much as a forethought for how I feel."

"It's better this way."

"Better for who? The self-destructive thoughts in your head? Because it's certainly not better for me and I'd go as far to say that it's not what you really want either. So pray tell, what's the real issue here?Where is all this stemming from?"

You shoot a glare his way—a defensive one, but still a glare nonetheless.

He reaches out to cup your face, his thumb stroking your cheek. It feels like no matter what you do, it's always wrong. Here you were acting like a brat to the man you loved, and here he was, being patient with you like a saint.

You relent, letting him have a peek into the inner world that you've kept a secret all this time. "There's a horrible weight in my chest carried with me wherever I go, wrapped up tight in my gut like a ball of twine, and no matter what I do, it comes back. I can't shake it. I can't shake anything. I'm still here, a mess of fear and nerves."

"I'm angry, vengeful, and mean, but at the same time, I'm scared of everything, timid and fragile as a mouse. If weakness were a person, it'd be me. Sometimes it's a miracle that i'm even able to do the things I do. I rely on you too much, and it scares me."

"You're anything but weak, my love. In fact, I think being vulnerable and open like this takes immense strength." He continues to caress your face.

"I'm not strong enough to fight alongside you. I'm useless when it comes to taking down the Mothercrystals."

He chuckles. "If physical strength was all I cared about, I would have taken a brute as my lover."

"Clive…" You roll your eyes in a playful manner, appreciating his attempt at lifting your mood.

The sun is setting now, and his chambers are tinted with a pale orange-yellow hue. The light reflects off the water, and you gaze upon the lake below while his gaze lingers on you.

"Come," he states, extending a hand as he stands up from the couch. You take his hand in yours as he leads you over to the gap in the wall, both admiring the sunset together. It's a beautiful evening; the clouds are painted pink and orange as the sun dips below the horizon.

"I'm serious, you know," he nudges your shoulder. The beginnings of a smile paint your features—a smile that he takes as a small win.

"Clive, I-" He presses a finger to your lips, silencing you. "Just listen, please," you nod, and he turns, facing the scenic view again, the sunlight bouncing off the yellow tones of his skin. "Do you remember traveling to the Apodetry all those years back? When I couldn't grapple with the fact that I was Ifrit and very well may have killed my own brother?"

You don't say anything, but you nod, and then he continues. "I'm not sure if I ever would have come to terms with it if you weren't by my side." He lets out a small sigh. "You say that you can't handle your own burdens, that I deserve someone stronger, but the truth is, without you, I might never have been able to bear my own. I'm not sure if I'd be the man I am today if I didn't have you, so don't you dare imply that I'd somehow be better off without you."

"You're right when you said I don't need you. It is not a matter of need or deserving, my love, but a matter of want. I want you. I desire you so wholeheartedly."

"I know that I alone am not enough to quell these thoughtsof yours, especially after the life you've lived-" he turns to face you again, his thumb grazing the leftover scar on your cheek from the removal of your brand, "-but please believe me when I say that you do matter, and not just to me, but to everyone here, to every person you've helped, to every soul you've graced with your kindness. Would you say those who work in the backgarden are unworthy of being here, simply because they don't wield a blade and march in the frontlines?"

"No," you pout.

He smiles. "Then I implore you to extend that same kindness to yourself." He steps closer, moving to nuzzle your nose with his. "Though you're not taking down Mothercrystals, you're showing people that there's still hope—that kindness can still exist in a world where harsh cruelties befall those who never deserve it."

"A twinkling light is left with everyone you help, no matter how minuscule it seems."

"We chose this undertaking so that dominants and bearers alike could live the lives they choose. If a life of peace is what you want, then it's one that you shall have. You shouldn't be fighting each and every day just so you can make it to the next."

Both of your foreheads press together as he continues to speak. "You don't need to throw yourself to the wolves. You're done with having to earn through suffering. You're done having to prove your worth. You don't have to earn your right to exist and be happy, not with me or anyone else here."

He presses his lips against yours. "I love you," he whispers in between the kiss. "Your vulnerabilities, your fears... They are not shortcomings, my love. They are what make you who you are, and though I wish I could make your pain a bit more tolerable, I wouldn't change a single thing about you, ever."

He presses more kisses on your lips, sweet, loving, and gentle. "You are my strength, my everything. I love you so much."

Bathed in the dying light of the sun, you hold each other tender with a slow brushing of lips against each other, and though such demons of the mind aren't so easily bested, you're given a moment's solace in the warm embrace of your lover, knowing that no matter what ails you, you'll face it together.

"I love you too, Clive."

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