#So just ignore me here. Just venting into the void

[satellite-evans]

closure

Pairing: Carlos Sainz x ex!reader

Summary: you don't need Carlos' closure.

Word count: 2k+

Warnings: angst, based on the Taylor Swift song

A/N:

This my third fic for the folkmore series, and it is with none other than Carlos Sainz! This is my first time writing for him so I was quite nervous, please tell me what you think!

English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.

Happy reading xxx

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.

It arrives in your inbox at 2:17 AM, the timestamp almost mocking the stillness of the night. The world outside is quiet, the kind of silence that fills your room with its weight, pressing against your ribs as if the very air knows what’s coming.

The email subject line is simple.

Just wanted you to know.

For a moment, you just stare at it. The words are innocuous, almost casual, but your heart knows better. You’ve seen that phrase before—at least in the way it echoed in your mind, in the way you tried to convince yourself you’d be fine without any more explanations.

And for some reason, you already know what it’s about. You don’t need to open it to feel the heavy, familiar knot tightening in your stomach. The ache in your chest that had dulled over time, the one you had worked so hard to ignore, throbs with renewed intensity, as if it’s alive and remembering the shape of old wounds. It’s as though your body recognizes him before your mind even does, and it reacts accordingly—a reflex you can’t outrun.

Your hands tremble slightly, the familiar sensation of fear and longing mixing in your veins, but you can't bring yourself to look away. The old ache becomes a weight in your throat, too, and for a moment, you're almost paralyzed by the gravity of it. You know this isn’t just a message. This is a door opening, an invitation to face something you buried deep. But you click on it anyway, drawn in by something you can’t explain, a part of you still hoping that maybe—just maybe—this will be the thing that makes it all make sense.

I just wanted you to know I hope you're doing well. I know things ended messy between us, and I hate that. I really do. I never wanted to hurt you, and I know that I did.

I’m sorry for how I left. For not saying enough. For saying too much. For everything in between.

I hope you’re happy. I really do.

- Carlos.

The words stare back at you, flat on the screen, sterile and detached. They sit there like a sentence of finality, as if they’re not even meant for you, but for someone who doesn’t carry the weight of your history with him. It’s just an email—another digital scrap of text sent into the void of the night. But after everything, after all that’s passed, this is what he gives you? Does he think that you’re just a situation that needs to be handled? A string of hollow words with no breath behind them, no warmth, nothing that even remotely resembles the person you once knew. No, not even that. The person you thought you knew.

It was almost ironic how the shape of his name still spelled out pain. Every letter, every syllable, carried a weight that dug deep, as if each time you thought of him, the wound reopened. It was strange, how someone you once loved could still manage to hurt you, even in their absence. Everything about him—his words, his actions, even his silence—had caused so much damage that it was honestly a little concerning.

You hated him. No, despised him. The anger simmered under your skin like a constant burn, always just beneath the surface, ready to erupt. The audacity he had, the way he thought he could just walk away, leaving destruction in his wake—it was almost unbelievable. He was wrong in so many ways the day he broke up with you. The way it all went down, how he acted like it was the easiest thing in the world, how he twisted every word you’d said into something it wasn’t—it was wrong, all of it. And by the looks of it, he probably knew by now. He had to. The way time had passed, the way people talked, the way you’d changed—he had to know the damage he’d done.

Your mind replays the last time you saw him. You can still picture it so vividly—the way he had stood in the doorway of your apartment, arms crossed over his chest like a shield, his eyes dark with something you couldn’t read. He looked smaller somehow, the exhaustion wearing him down, hanging off of him like a second skin, like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, yet he couldn't find it in himself to care about you anymore. The lines in his face were deeper, like time had been more unforgiving to him than you ever realized. The way his jaw clenched so tightly when you had begged him to just talk to you, that desperate plea falling from your lips like a prayer, but he wouldn’t listen. His silence had cut deeper than anything he could have said. The way he hadn’t looked back when he walked away. Not once. Not a single glance. Like you didn’t exist. That was when you realized he had put a distance between you two ages ago that you were finally seeing—a sea you were too tired to cross.

The door had clicked shut behind him with a finality that shattered you into pieces you weren’t sure you could ever put back together. That sound—the click of the lock—wasn’t just the end of a visit, but the end of everything. The end of any future you thought you’d have together. You didn’t just lose him in that moment. You lost the life you’d built around him. And you’ve been trying to rebuild ever since.

And now, months later, this. This email. A quiet, late-night message, sterile in its simplicity, like he was trying to offer a neat little bow to wrap up the wreckage he left behind. But there’s no ribbon to tie, no neatness to this. What he gave you wasn’t closure—it was a reminder that, for all his talk of wanting to make amends, he’s still incapable of meeting you where you need him.

You slam your laptop shut, too quickly, too harshly, as if the words might physically reach out and strangle you if you don’t. For a moment, your fingers linger on the lid, shaking, the intensity of your pulse drowning out the quiet hum of the city outside. The night has become suffocating, and you can’t tell if it’s because of the email, or because you’re finally confronting what you’ve been trying to ignore for so long. The pain hasn’t gone anywhere, and neither has the ache. It sits with you like an old friend, one you can’t seem to shake.

It’s almost laughable, really. You can’t help but chuckle bitterly to yourself as you stare at the screen. He thinks he’s giving you closure. That this carefully constructed email, this rehearsed apology, is supposed to fix something, to heal the rift that’s been eating away at you for months. That it will somehow mend the fractures in your heart as if it’s something that can be neatly patched up with a few well-chosen words. But the truth is, it doesn’t even come close. No, this isn’t closure. This isn’t even an attempt at healing—it’s just an afterthought, a last-ditch effort to clear his conscience without ever truly facing the damage he caused. And it’s almost insulting.

Closure isn’t an email at 2 AM, casually dropped into your life as though he’s just checking off a box. It isn’t a collection of words stripped of warmth, void of real feeling, written at a distance, with no regard for the time, or the place, or the person it’s supposed to reach. Closure would have been a conversation. A real one. A face-to-face moment where he would have stayed, where he would have stayed long enough to listen, to hear you, and not just walk away the moment it got hard. That would have been closure. But he didn’t stay. He left you behind with nothing but the echoes of your unanswered questions.

Your breath catches in your throat, and for a moment, you struggle to steady yourself. You take a deep breath, but it shudders on the way in, uneven and sharp. It feels like your lungs are betraying you, like they can’t hold the air in anymore, and you’re left gasping in the void between anger and heartache. Your throat is thick with unshed tears, but you refuse to let them fall. Not again. Not for him. You’ve cried enough tears for him already, enough for a lifetime. You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this anymore, that you wouldn’t let him be the reason you hurt.

You want to reply. You want to scream, to let him know how deeply he’s failed you, how his absence is still an open wound, festering in the corners of your mind. You want to tell him that, even now, you still wake up in the middle of the night, expecting to hear his voice, expecting to feel the weight of his arm around your waist. You still reach for him in the dark, your fingers grasping at air, and you realize too late that he’s not there. You want to tell him that every time you see red—Ferrari red, that damn red, the color of his car, of everything he used to be to you—you feel like you might break all over again, like all the pieces you’ve tried to pick up and put together have shattered into even smaller bits.

But he's not Ferrari red anymore. He's Williams blue now. You’d probably be a new wrinkle in his life, a person who wouldn’t fit. Heck, you didn’t even fit when he was in Ferrari. You could answer him back, tell him you forgave him, that you both could be friends again. Maybe that would iron everything out nicely.

But you won’t. You won’t give him that satisfaction. You won’t give him the power to pull you back into this mess, into this space where you lose yourself every time you think about him. He doesn’t deserve that. You don’t deserve to let him keep doing this to you.

The frustration, the hurt, the unanswered questions—they all feel like they're swirling in a storm that won't quiet. You crawl into bed, pulling the blankets around yourself as if they could offer the protection your mind and heart desperately crave.

You are fine. Everything is fine. You had your beers, your occasional crying sessions, your candles. You were doing so much better without him. You had to.

It cut deep, knowing him, all the way to the bone. The breakup had been necessary. It had to be. You were healing, getting better, moving on. Or at least, that’s what you told yourself.

But the ache in your chest and the rapid, shallow breaths you couldn't control told a different story. It was one you knew the ending to but didn’t want to face. His email was oh so unnecessary, cruel even. He had broken up with you months ago, and yet here he was again, trying to reach back into your life. He shouldn’t have contacted you. He should’ve left you alone.

And you definitely should’ve stayed in bed.

Hatred and regret twisted inside of you, each trying to take the lead, but you were too exhausted to figure out which was winning. Still, you knew you had to respond.

Your gaze lingered on the laptop screen for what felt like hours, your mind scrambling for the right words, something that could strike him, something that would hurt, something that would linger with him forever the way he had lingered in your life. But nothing came.

Instead, what you found was something deeper—something far more painful.

Acceptance.

Acceptance was the true winner in the battle between your emotions. It was the thing you’d been running from, the thing you’d fought so hard to avoid. You had accepted it.

It was over.

So, with a steady hand, you typed the final words you’d ever send him and blocked his email so he could never contact you again.

"I don’t need your closure."

[m1dn1ghts1nger]

.

[moondharse]

Looking back at the "severe" social anxiety diagnosis I got as a teen ..

It's like, if I went to a therapist and said: "I do not like being stabbed with knives. I do activly avoid situations that involve me being stabbed with knives. When I have to face a situation where I can expect to be stabbed with knives, I dread it and can sometimes not bring myself to pull through, no matter how much I want to reap the benefit I am after, that requires the situation."

And the therapist went: "Oh, so you're irrationally afraid of people. Got it."

[miiiwu]

.

[funkytoesart]

you can always tell the people who give social media advice who are naturally or conventionally attractive even without even having to look at a photo of them cause they're always the ones that recommend showing your face in reels or videos to promote your art and it's like,,, talk about pretty/skinny privilege lol

[moonchild-in-blue]

Oh.

[floral-hex]

woke up at 4am feeling the weight of my life crushing me, so I’ve been sitting out in my car for the last couple of hours because I just need. to. be. somewhere else.

[bluestjayy]

.

[nartatoalevy]

it's absolutely mortifying to me knowing some people who treated me absolutely terribly have nearly ruined one of my favorite hobbies for me; to the point where hearing about it right now just fills me with dread. I desperately want to fall back in love with this thing and have fun again with it, but for the time being, I'm just... not. Even creating for it has become hard.

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[mbat]

anxiety needs to fuck off and die fr though i literally feel like im gonna die over shit that is. so manageable and not going to matter in like a month or whatever who cares

[softnsquishable]

[chloeangelbaby]

You don’t love me

Crybaby! Reader x Rafe Cameron

———————————˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊————————————

It had been weeks of the same routine. Rafe was up early, gone all day, and by the time he got home, he was too exhausted to do anything but collapse into bed. You understood at first—Rafe worked hard, and running a company wasn’t easy. But as the days turned into weeks, his absence began to gnaw at you.

Tonight, you’d reached your limit.

You were sitting on the couch, scrolling aimlessly on your phone, when the craving hit. You wanted ice cream, something sweet and cold to take your mind off the void of Rafe’s company. You peeked into the kitchen but found nothing that would satisfy you.

“Rafe?” you called, walking into the bedroom where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Yeah?” His voice was tired, his eyes barely lifting to meet yours.

“I wanna go for a drive. We can stop and get ice cream or something,” you said, your tone hopeful.

Rafe sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Baby, I can’t tonight. I’m dead on my feet. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

The casual dismissal stung. “No, it can’t wait,” you snapped, your voice rising. “You’ve been saying that all week! Tomorrow, tomorrow—what about me, Rafe?”

“I’m doing this for us,” he said, his tone defensive. “I’m not saying no because I want to. I’m exhausted, okay?”

You stared at him, your emotions bubbling over. Before you knew it, you were crying, your chest heaving with sobs. “You don’t care! You don’t care about me anymore!”

Rafe frowned, standing up. “That’s not fair, and you know it.”

“Fair?” you spat, your voice cracking as you stomped your foot. “What’s not fair is you ignoring me all the time! All I wanted was a stupid drive, and you can’t even give me that!”

“Dolly—”

“Don’t call me that!” you screamed, tears streaming down your face. Your words tumbled out in a jumble, barely making sense. “You don’t listen to me! You don’t care! You just… you just—”

You weakly shoved at his chest, your small fists thumping against him as you hiccupped and choked on your sobs. Rafe stood there, letting you vent, his hands hovering as if unsure whether to grab you or give you space.

“You’re mean! And, and… I hate you!” you wailed, though you didn’t mean it.

Finally, Rafe had enough. “Alright,” he said, his voice firm. He grabbed your wrists gently but firmly, holding them still. “That’s enough, baby. Stop.”

But you didn’t stop. “You don’t love me!” you blubbered, your head dropping forward as you sobbed uncontrollably.

Rafe sighed, pulling you into his chest despite your protests. “I love you more than anything,” he murmured, his arms wrapping around you tightly. “But you’ve got to calm down, okay? You’re working yourself up too much.”

“I-I can’t!” you hiccupped, your body shaking in his hold.

“Yes, you can,” he said, his voice soft but firm. “Breathe, Dolly. Come on, with me. In and out.”

You tried, but the sobs kept breaking through, your breaths coming in shallow gasps. Rafe scooped you up and carried you to the bed, sitting down with you in his lap. He started rubbing your back in slow, soothing circles, his chin resting on top of your head.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he murmured. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I just… I just wanted…” you sniffled, unable to finish your sentence.

“I know,” he said softly. “I know, baby. I’ve been a terrible boyfriend lately, haven’t I?”

You nodded against his chest, your tears soaking his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice full of genuine regret. “You’re right—I haven’t been around enough. I’ll fix it, okay? Starting tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” you mumbled, your voice small and wobbly.

“Promise,” he said, lifting your chin so you could see the sincerity in his eyes. “And tonight, I’ll make it up to you. We’ll stay up and watch whatever you want, or I’ll run out and get ice cream. Anything you need, baby.”

You sniffled, wiping your face with your sleeve. “Just want you…”

“You’ve got me,” he said, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Always.”

Your sobs began to subside, your breathing evening out as Rafe continued to hold you close. You clung to him, your face buried in his neck, finally feeling the comfort you’d been craving.

“Love you,” you whispered.

“Love you more, Dolly,” he murmured, his voice a soft promise against your hair.

———————————˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊————————————-

[nelliebachesneg]

Jason X Jazz

This entire post is me screaming into the void because I'm writing a fic and I'm having a lot of emotions about it. You have been warned.

I am currently processing some things through the characters of Jason Todd and Jasmine Fenton, and I need to talk about their characters before I break down completely.

Jazz is easy for me to write. Jazz is an Enneagram 5, which I'm pretty sure is my type as well. Jazz ignores her emotions - or at least refuses to identify them - in favor of logic. Truth is ultimately what matters to her. She hoards information in her attempts to find the truth, and no amount of information will be enough until she finds a satisfactory answer.

I see a lot of myself in Jazz.

Mostly good things - and in fact that's the problem. I have a hard time seeing Jazz's flaws as flaws. The orginal show calls her out for being a know-it-all, and a teenager who thinks she's an adult, but as I write this I realize that I never saw that as something that had to be fixed - or at least, not as something that had to be fixed by Jazz herself.

Because of course Jazz felt like she had to be an adult. Her parents were caught up in their own lives, to the point where they left their science experiments on the kitchen table with toddlers running around. Of course when Danny started acting differently, and her parents didn't notice, she blamed it on their inattention. And of course it was specifically Danny's need for attention that mattered; she's got her intellect to carry her through life's challenges, after all. She's the one with perfect test scores, the one who applies herself, the one who understands the importance of a life apart from ghost hunting.

Oh, she's aware of her own need for attention, of course. She'd have to be a fool not to realize that, sometimes, she gets envious of ghosts for how much her parents seem to be obsessed with them. (She's have to be a fool not to realize that, magic or no magic, she shouldn't have fallen so fast for Johnny.) But she can handle it. She can think her way through it. Danny can't; all he has are his…

Friends.

Who are Jazz's friends?

Who does she talk to besides her brother, her parents, and the occasional teacher or classmate for academic purposes?

Where does she vent all that emotional energy besides the occasional concert?

This is where I see Jazz's flaws and mine overlap. This is also something I feel comfortable writing about, because it's something that I have talked about in therapy ad nauseum. I know the answer here is quite literally to lean on the relationships you do have, and if that's not enough, to find new relationships. It takes work and more than a bit of luck, but it is possible for Jazz (and me) to break out of this idea that she always needs to be rational about everything, including herself. I think that's what the show was going for, actually - but equating emotional expression with childishness is… wrong, I think. It reeks of underlying toxic masculinity if nothing else, and considering what I've heard about Butch Hartman, that's not off-base.

And then there's Jason.

Jason fucking Todd.

Who like no other character I have ever seen in fiction, fanfiction, and all the headcanons in between, embodies the Bible verse of Romans 7:19-20:

"For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."

Jason is an Enneagram 8. Jason, whether he realizes it or not, is obsessed with control. He wants the world to be good, to be just, and he will go to dramatic lengths to make it so - not unlike Bruce. At the same time, though, he has internalized the belief that he himself is not a good person. He's a just person, maybe - and I would even venture kind - but as much as he tries to do what he thinks is right, Jason Todd does not think of himself as good during or after UtRH. He's sacrificed his sense of empathy, after all, and that made him "the bad one" who "needs to be stopped". (Makes sense, since he's the one that was never good enough anyway.)

So is it any wonder that he struggles to believe in forgiveness? Is it any wonder that he won't allow himself to accept love when it is offered? He doesn't think he deserves it. He thinks that people who have done worse than him deserve it even less. And maybe if he can take them out, in a twisted way it'll make him better. Maybe if he can rid the world of a few monsters, it'll make him less of one.

Jason at his worst is all of my self-loathing, all of my catastrophic thinking, all of my self-delusion, and all of my fear. I've connected his struggle to accept love to my own struggles with sexual content. I've said it before elsewhere, but I think I need to say it again: radical forgiveness and love are the only way forward. The catch is that, by necessity, those things require connections with other people.

And what writing Jason in my fic is asking me to do is to imagine the people I care most about in this world discovering the worst part of me - and forgiving me for it. Helping me with it. Only for them to ultimately fail to fix me, thus making me desperate enough to turn to a stranger who may screw me over worse than anyone ever has.

Suddenly I feel like we've been down this road before.

And while I know that Jazz is someone Jason can trust, Jason doesn't know that, and it's difficult to picture - well, no, actually, it's not hard to picture Jason, after being caught in a moment of Pit Rage, to tell the worst to Jazz in an effort to scare her off. And it's not hard to picture Jazz rationalizing that behavior, and even seeing honor in the honesty of it. It's not hard to picture Jason being confused and suspicious, forced to confront his own assumptions about what's possible and what he deserves out of that possibility. It's not hard to picture Jazz having empathy for those who suddenly receive more than they think they are owed. It's not hard to imagine Jason bargaining with himself, desperate for something to work but also ready to bail at the first sign of betrayal.

Holy shit, it's easy to see how he slowly comes to accept her help with his Pit Madness. It's easy to see how after he feels like he's back in control of himself, he'd start falling in love with this girl who sees the best in him.

And the kicker is, she doesn't even see what she's done as special; she just didn't want him to feel alone. She didn't want him to feel trapped in his own head.

She's not expecting those sentiments to be returned.

She's not expecting Jason to like it when she loses her temper. She's not expecting him to treat her with respect when it comes to her hobbies, the same she gives him. She's not expecting him to want to be around her, to seek her out when he's feeling any type of way; for her to seek him out and have him be willing to listen when she wants to vent. She's not expecting the committment, the quiet support, the feeling that for once she can lean on someone else and just be herself.

Is it because he feels like he owes her? Is it because she has something he wants? Is he trying to manipulate her? There has to be a rational explanation-

Oh.

Oh.

…Well there's certainly nothing rational about it, that's for damn sure. What do you mean, Jason, you think I'm passionate and smart? Even if that's true- Well of course I'm protective of children and the disadvantaged, who isn't? And what do you mean it's a relief that I don't just know about the vigilante life, I understand the vigilante life? What do you mean it blows your mind that the killing- Well, it doesn't not bother me- But yeah it's not the end of the world. What do you mean you're thankful that I've made Crime Alley my home and you'll be here for me as long as I want you to be?

What do you mean you love me?

Do I love you too? Of course I-

Of course I do.

Because of course she does. Of course she admires his honesty, even if it makes him sound like an asshole sometimes. Of course she could spend hours figuring out his quirks, religiously studying what makes him smile and how far she can push his buttons before they're chasing each other across rooftops. Of course she lights up every time he comes over, every time he so much as texts her. Of course she's noticed that he's been able to get her to tap into her emotions in a way she's never before felt safe enough to.

Of course she loves him.

And of course he loves her.

They've made each other feel alive (again).

[shout-it-out13]

This fandom I swear

So I know I’m basically screaming into the void here but I have seen some seriously alarming tendencies of both parasocial behaviour and now downright infantalisation regarding Yoongi’s DUI incident

Now I’m a big fan of Yoongi, and I’m just as fond of the “lil meow meow” memes about him as anybody else, but it just doesn’t apply in this case.

Let me spell out the obvious (because then takes I’m seeing is downright worrying):

1. Min Yoongi is a 31 year old man. Not a baby or a teen, a whole ass adult, in his 30s. Thus him being of legal age, makes him as fully subject to the law, as any other legal adult of legal age (or even those of minor age, persecution of underage people is very much a thing, and even if he wasn’t an adult, he would still have received criminal punishment).

(Edit: It has been brought to my attention that I had misunderstood the situation and I must admit that I based this post when I wrote it on what I had seen on Tumblr of the situation (no, I didn’t fact-check online and I won’t now either, this post was made out of an emotional response to the overall fandom situation)(I get if people thinks that’s messed up and ignorant of me (which you’re entitled to totally) but personally I have never been personally invested much in BTS beyond their music and I don’t see that changing). I just wanted to vent and say my piece, I apologise for any misinformation I may have caused. Again, I do not condone the media backlash that has gone beyond the reasonable amount (holding him accountable is different from going on a outright witch-hunt).

-I know this post is months old, and I see now I have had people in my inbox since I first posted it, and I only have seen them now (I ignore that I even have mutuale, inbox and dms on here because that’s just not what I’m here for). I must admit that I did delete your messages and could have actually researched the situation, but to be honest I can’t be bothered (again, I’m not Wikipedia, the facts are there online, this post was made and now edited out of my emotional frustration over the situation), but felt I should at least say something so here it is, lazily edited and smacked in the middle.

2. A DUI (which you can get while operation any form of vehicle or mode of transportation, be it cars, scooters, boats, bikes etc) is a serious offense, no matter what the outcome is. It’s fortunate that this situation was so mild, nobody got hurt nor no personal damages, it still is a serious offense and should have be treated as such. Yes, we shouldn’t be treating this situation as if he hit and killed somebody, but he still could have, and this needs to be taken seriously.

Min Yoongi, a man in his 30s (a grown ass man of legal age, whom I’m seeing getting his criminal offense downplayed like nothing happened by those both of legal age and those not), committed a crime, as mild as the situation was, is a serious situation and for that break of the law, he deserves to be punished for it. And the fact that there are people treating like he did nothing wrong is just idiotic.

The amount of parasocial behaviour (friendly reminder, you will never truly know any idol, youtuber, celebrity, actor etc if you don’t personally know them (no meeting them multiple times and borderline stalking them and learning evrry single detail you can about them online doesn’t count) and infantilisation in this fandom is insane.

Stop putting people you look up to on such a high pedestal until the point where you think they can do nothing wrong (like some armys are doing right now, with a man in his 30s)

I love Yoongi, I still look up to him even after this, I’m glad that he wasn’t hurt and that this doesn’t hurt his military service. I hope he learns from this, faces whatever legal punishment they give him, and hope that he can regain his license again in the future.

I hope he, the company and most importantly the fandom, recognises how serious this situation is and stops going “poor little meow meow” or “I’m in love with a criminal” (no you don’t, nobody in the fandom knows who and how BTS are in their private lives (private lives whom they are fully entitled to keep hidden from overobsessive fangirls who thinks stalking people counts as knowing them. They’re people, not objects nor saints, please treat them as such) over a man who commuted a criminal offense, aka broke the law and now needs to face said punishment.

I know I have been repeating myself over and over, but with the amount of braindead takes seen in this fandom regarding theses legal grown men, is just painful.

[hollowtakami]

WHEN THE WORLD NEEDS YOU

Keigo Takami x GN reader

CONTENT; warning for implications of s/h, suicidal ideation, references to insomnia/depression, hurt comfort, angst, established relationship, pet names (duckie, birdie, baby bird, baby), references to struggles with eating + taking care of yourself amidst depressive episodes

WORD COUNT; 1899

AUTHOR NOTE; it’s currently 5am and my insomnia has kept me up with my thoughts, so i wrote this to try and vent out some feelings. It’s a little heavy in some parts, so please read with caution - if you feel like you can’t read this, please do not feel obligated to do so. You’re loved, you deserve to be here. Please take care of yourself. <3

The morning light seeped under closed curtains, flooding onto the floor of your room. Heavy eyes stared to the ceiling as your heart pounded in your chest. Insomnia had you in the palm of its hand and it was squeezing the life out of you - you were tired, you just wanted rest.

When life felt like a chore, any leftover energy wasted on doing the dishes, you found yourself needing to hug Keigo’s jacket when you tried to fall asleep. It was a survival instinct at this point, you and that jacket against the flurry of thoughts in your head. On nights when Keigo was called in for night patrols, the void that his existence stitched up burst open again. It wasn’t his fault, you put it down to you being broken.

Your eyes were almost as heavy as your heart. That beating clock was weighing you down into the mattress, the heap of blankets on top of you that reminded you of Keigo’s wings, the fur lining of his jacket against your cheek; little things like that brought you peace, but not in this moment. Right now, everything was too much. You groaned, a tired hand lifting to rub your eyes, as if that would aid you in your fruitless attempt at falling asleep.

Not that there was any point in falling asleep. It was well into the early morning now, you’d be awake until afternoon the next day. That’s when you’d be lying in bed, and, like always, your eyes would give up on you. You’d wake up around midnight and the cycle would repeat all over again.

Keigo worked most weekdays, having the day off occasionally, if the agency was feeling generous. He was in high demand most of the time, there’d been a sudden spike in villain activity.

He’d work to keep you safe, he always promised you that before he kissed your knuckles gently, hurrying off to aid citizens in need.

You would always stand on the balcony and watch him fly off, see how his shape got smaller the further away he got. Jealousy burned deep in the pit of your stomach; you felt selfish for it, but you couldn’t help it.

You needed Keigo, but everyone else needed him more because people didn’t know how to behave themselves. You were angry at the world for stealing him, you pinned it down as that and have ignored it since.

But now you were laying alone in your bed, his jacket giving off a homely scent that made your heart hurt. The blankets weren’t enough to replace the weight and warmth of those crimson feathers anymore - you became desperate, your heart was banging against your chest cavity, screaming and begging for release.

The relief never came. It never would until he came back.

Thoughts of that twisted kind of relief found its way into the crossroads of your mind, jumping straight into the highway of neurons and catching you by surprise.

Elsewhere, Keigo was just finishing up with a petty thief who’d robbed a convenience store. This spike of criminal activity was very much morphed into a moral panic by the media. The most dangerous thing Keigo had had to deal with recently was a hostage situation, but for some reason, even those were rare. It seems the LOV had scared most low-level thugs into hiding, or in the very least, had seriously knocked their confidence and they were doing everything they could to seem tough; even if that was stealing melon bread from their local store.

Keigo stretched, yawning as his wings spread. He stood patiently waiting for the police to come and collect the restrained villains at his feet. They were petty thieves, sure, but Keigo had had enough action for one night.

Checking his phone in the meantime, his free, ungloved hand tapped away at his screen to check for any messages from you. He did this a lot, any time he had free time on the job, mostly. He put it down to muscle memory.

He frowned a little when he noticed you hadn’t texted him - at all, in fact.

Humming to himself, he pocketed his phone when he noticed a flash of red and blue, a siren’s screams coming into earshot.

With a laugh, he knelt down to the villains, plucking a feather from his left wing and poking it into the tight ropes of one of the angry thugs.

“I’ll let them take care of you from here!” Keigo saluted towards the police cars approaching, before wasting no time to lift off, cutting through the air with godlike speed. Leisurely flying through the early morning air, Keigo yawned. Granted, the air was sure to wake him up, breeze stroking back his messy golden bangs, tired eyes hidden behind his visor. His wings flapped as he reached for his back pocket, taking out his phone again and calling your number.

“Come on, birdie, pick up,” He clicked his tongue, hoping you’d be awake, even if your lack of messages told him you were probably asleep.

Straight to voicemail. The robotic phone voice played out into the morning breeze and Keigo felt concern start to bubble at the bottom of his stomach. He weighed his options - you definitely hadn’t blocked him, you never turned off your phone either. He eased his mind a little by concluding that you were just asleep. Still, if he was gonna get any sleep himself, he needed to check up on you.

As to not surprise you with his visit, he made sure to text you that he was coming over.

Your phone buzzed. It snapped you out of your thoughts, making you jump. You noticed a missed call from Keigo, a message too. You mumbled to yourself how pathetic you were for drowning so deep in your thoughts that you couldn’t hear your own phone ringing.

You didn’t have the energy to text him back, to tell him that everything was fine and that he didn’t need to come over. The tear stains on your cheek, your racing heart, clammy skin; they told you otherwise.

That one thought pulsated around your head, it was laughing at you, taunting you. You wanted to hold your head, shake it out in a screaming fit.

You would, if there wasn’t a worried, wide-eyed Keigo at your bedroom window.

You slithered off your bed, sniffling and rubbing your eyes as you unlocked and lifted the sill of your window. Keigo wobbled inside, folding his wings and soon regaining his balance. You could feel his eyes darting around your room but you couldn’t look at him, your head down. You were ashamed of yourself, but then again, your depression always did that to you.

Keigo didn’t feel the need to ask as to why you were covering your arms.

His eyes met the spare jacket he gifted you, wrapped messily around one of your pillows next to a pile of blankets scrunched up like discarded paper, forgotten thoughts, notes.

“Duckie,” Keigo’s voice shook as he pulled your head into his chest, his arms folding around your frame as your own stayed stuck to your sides. “Duckie, talk to me.”

Your frame shook with unexpected sobs. You wanted to repress, but you couldn’t. Keigo made you vulnerable. Whether or not that was a good thing, you didn’t know. His hand to your head, softly stroking back the hair stuck to your face with the glue of your tears, his other hand gently pressed into your back, applying a pressure that made you feel safe, secure, amidst the storm of your feelings.

You tried not to make too much noise, nor did you want to soil Keigo’s hero costume with tears you didn’t want to shed in the first place. You felt so pathetic, like you didn’t need to feel this way, like depression only picked on you to mock you - you had no reason to be sad, it told you, you were just a fraud, nobody wanted you here, it pointed and laughed at you every moment you opened your eyes unto the world.

A world you didn’t wish to be born into, a world that cursed you the moment you left the warmth of your mother’s womb. A world that Keigo was in, too.

“I just,” You choked on your emotions. They got stuck in your throat and they stayed there, adamant to steal your breath. “I just don’t wanna do this anymore”

Your words came rushing out into the fabric of Keigo’s shirt, muffled as they poured from your heart. You couldn’t speak anymore, your ribs, shoulders, your entire body relentlessly heaving up and down from your cries.

Keigo held you patiently, hugging you tightly and grounding you. He slowly wrapped his wings around you, letting you get lost in the softness, the warmth.

A small kiss was planted onto your head like a small seed of hope, Keigo whispering into your hair. “Hey, easy, birdie,” His hand stroked your hair again - it was definitely muscle memory. “Just breathe with me, slowly, in and out,”

Gently applying more pressure to your back, Keigo held you closer to him as if he wanted to become one with you, to be able to fight off all your pain for you and set you free. Amidst the exaggerated epidemic of villain activity, the one villain he could never defeat was your sadness, and it killed him.

He felt relieved as he felt you breathing in time with him, your shaking subsiding to small shivers, sobs tuning down to sniffling.

“There you go, baby,” Keigo slowly lifted your chin with a hooked finger, looking into the bloodshot-white of your eyes. “I'm here now, i’m gonna take care of you,”.

If there was one thing you were grateful for, it was Keigo’s patience. He understood that your depression found its way into your bone marrow and made functioning, living, so difficult. He knew that there were days where you hardly ate anything or drank any water, days where you swore to yourself you’d do that one chore, but never did - it was okay, he’d always tell you.

“I’m so proud of you, baby bird, so proud of you,” Keigo muttered into your hair, “I’m so glad you’re still here,”

You smiled as best you could.

“I love you, Keigo.” You mumbled, pressing an ear to his chest, the sound of his heartbeat was a lifeline to you.

Keigo breathed through his nose, kissing your forehead and squeezing you gently as he smiled. “I love you too, duckie, so much.”

After calming you down, Keigo would bandage you up, guiding you through it. He’d drink a glass of water and grab a snack with you, because he knew it made it easier for you. He’d hold you in his arms, swaying on his feet and making you giggle because he loved to hear your laugh and see that smile of yours. He loved you, he wanted to keep you safe. He’d keep fighting that villain in your head with you, Keigo was going to be there for you no matter what.

After making sure you were comfortable in bed, he mumbled a small goodnight to you, spooning you and planting gentle kisses on your back and shoulders, humming and lulling you to sleep.

And you would sleep, for the first time in weeks, peacefully.