#ft. rafael carreño

[delilahcarreno]

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

"I feel guilty about a lot of things, some more reasonable than others. Not trying harder to make it work with Rafael. Working so many late nights and weekends. Everything that happened with Ben, how that affected Sophie. Not being closer to Buddy. Not recognizing the signs from our dad. Not being able to forgive our mom for keeping his diagnosis from us...it's a long list."

"Realistically, I know that some of the things on it aren't actually my fault, and I like to think that I accept the guilt or, or--the blame for the ones that are, but...I don't know how well I'm actually doing that when deep down I know the second someone called me out on any one of them, I'd have an excuse ready."

@benj-hyun / @buddywellls

oc asks: not-so-nice edition

[budddywells]

for: @rafacarreno

where: somewhere in the 'burbs, around 3am

He doesn't know how he got here.

Not physically, he knew exactly how he found himself sat on a curb in a street that felt like a suburban liminal space, pulling a drag from the only cigarette that had survived in the box in his back pocket when he connected with the edge of a marble kitchen island due to a deliberate shove from one angry looking stock broker.

( That was an easy enough thread to follow: stripping at a bachelorette party was fine, going home with the bride who's husband wasn't away on business as expected was where it got messy. )

What he had a hard time discerning was how he got here in a bigger sense. Existentially, it was difficult to discern an exact moment in time that he could point to and say that's where life had went from trucking along to hard then to straight out of his control.

The last two years had put him through the ringer, and it seemed that was now what he did to everyone else around him, intentional or not.

In the scuffle with the now unhappy groom, his phone had fallen victim to the deliberate way it had been thrown to the ground and smashed for good measure, leaving him to try and figure out how the hell he was supposed to get home without the ease of an app.

The kindness of the drunken Samaritan that had spilled out of a taxi with her husband in tow (returning from what he assumed was some sort of PTA gone wild evening out) had started and stopped at letting him use her phone as long as he didn't loiter on her perfectly maintained lawn.

There was only one number he knew off by heart, and that was down to the owner being the kind of consistent he's not sure existed in folks these days. His number never changed, it was the same one that Buddy used to prank call with his friends as a teen on an odd Friday night when he thought that shit was funny just to see if he could get a rise out of him.

It was the same set of digits he had scribbled on the back of a bar mat and offered as a resource when he found himself in conversation with a kid that was too young to be in the same bar as him, and the only number that came to mind when he had been told by HR to provide an emergency contact for his file when he had been working at the bank.

Despite all the ways Buddy had tried to prove his reliability as something alternate, something more sinister -- a facade, an illusion, a kind of long-con before he showed some true colours that were more in line with everyone else in his life that let him down -- Rafael always showed up.

So, he stretched his legs out in front of him, finished off his cigarette and ignored how the ache just under his eye from where a fist had connected with it got more gnawing as the warmth of the whiskey he had been drinking tempered off as he inched closer to sobriety and he waited.

[budddywells]

Buddy looks from the water bottle to the man holding it once he was inside his car, the sound of his seatbelt clicking into place following. Sometimes Rafael could be so Rafael-y that it still managed to take him off guard, despite the fact he's known him his whole life.

No matter what he tried to push the other's buttons, from the petulant disobedience of a boy to the reckless actions carried out by the man that boy became, he had never managed to push his patience far enough that he stopped answering the phone.

He wishes he could find something to say that could show that he was grateful for that much, but he couldn't, so he didn't.

"Nah, it looks worse than it is but it doesn't even hurt bad. Doubt anything's broken." Plus, that would just incur another bill that he didn't want to worry about. He twisted the cap off the water and took a gulp of it, a grimace following as the act of swallowing the liquid hurt due to a combination of too many cigarettes smoked in quick succession that night and too much alcohol consumed in less time.

The silence that followed as they drove wasn't comfortable, at least not for Buddy. He was on edge and it was entirely self-inflicted.

"If you got some shit to say, I'd rather you just come out and say it now."

Rafa, starting awake to the sound of his phone ringing twenty minutes ago, had rolled over and grabbed it with a grunt of effort and nearly silenced the call when he saw an unknown number. He hadn't in the end, of course — a three AM call was probably not a spam bot, and he wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep once he started worrying about who might have been trying to reach him.

A good thing, too, because it had turned out to be Buddy. This isn't the first time he's had to rescue his ex-brother-in-law from the streets of Seattle in the middle of the night, but when Rafa pulls up to the curb in front of some upper-middle-class-looking house in one of the upper-middle-class-looking suburbs just outside of the city, he can tell straight away that Buddy's in worse shape than usual. He wants to ask where his phone is, and how he'd gotten here, and what he'd been doing, but holds back for now on the interrogation because although he'd watched Buddy grow up, and he very often feels like it, he isn't his father, and it's not his place. Nor is it what Buddy needs right now.

"Hey, kiddo," he says when Buddy climbs in, and he holds out a water bottle. He looks terrible closer up, a bruise forming around one eye and a mile-long stare that's more than a little concerning. "Do we need to go to the hospital or you okay going back to mine?"

[delilahcarreno]

Cadmus: Have you ever had your heart broken?

"I have, multiple times. My divorce, for one. I loved my husband, and he loved me, but it just...wasn't enough. We were young with very real adult responsibilities, and as much as we loved each other, there was no real support. Not in the way I needed, not in the way Sophie needed...but I don't regret it, either. Rafa is a great father, and if the sacrifice was our relationship or the one with his children, I'm happy we didn't try to drag things out any longer."

"I do have this habit of getting in my own way though, I think. Like if I don't have an obstacle someone else has placed in my path, I have to create one of my own. That's what I did with Ben, ultimately. Regrettably. We had something strong and stable and good and I just...took a sledgehammer to the foundation just to prove that it could crack. To give myself a better reason to have felt anything other than pure, unadulterated excitement at finding that ring in his closet. I loved Ben. I wanted to be his wife. And for some reason, I just couldn't let that be enough."

ft. @benj-hyun

Greek Myth Asks

[delilahcarreno]

👪 sophie

"I was scared shitless practically my entire pregnancy with Sophie, starting right when I saw those two little lines. I took the test right there in the pharmacy bathroom, couldn't even wait to get home, or to even stop and think about calling Rafa to tell him to come meet me first, but he'd find me later at home, sat on the edge of the bath tub with at least three other tests on the counter, all positive, and I remember just looking up to see him standing there and just...bursting into tears. He probably looked so confused, not knowing if they were happy tears or sad tears or what. How could he, when I didn't even know what I was feeling, beyond just...well, scared shitless. We'd been married barely a year, and I didn't even know if I wanted kids, we hadn't talked about it yet...I thought I'd have more time to decide. Life thinks it's funny, like that."

"I won't take all the credit, because I know I messed up with her more than I even realize and her therapist probably hears all about, but I couldn't be prouder of the exceptional woman she turned out to be. They say you want to be able to give your kids more than what you had, so I can only hope that she felt I was always there when she needed me to be, and she didn't feel burdened beneath weight she felt I pushed onto her. I'd say she certainly felt that it was okay to leave the nest; she's currently abroad teaching English as a second language while working on her MA, which is just...proud doesn't even begin to cover it, but that doesn't stop me from reminding her every chance I get. We talk every day, if not every other day, so there's plenty of opportunity."

send 👪 for my muse to talk about a family member of theirs.

[delilahcarreno]

what would your muse say is their biggest flaw?

"I know that I don't know how to ask for help. I honestly don't think I ever have. I was always just the one keeping things together, the one taking care of everybody, because I felt if I didn't, who would?

Even after I moved out of the house, and I married Rafael, I thought maybe I would magically learn how to accept support, how to lean on somebody else. But I remember when Sophie was born, I was so insistent that I didn't need anything. Not help feeding her, or changing her, or getting up when she would cry in the middle of the night. I'm fine was practically my mantra, even though I was so far from it. There was no winning, either. I was annoyed when he'd ask to help, I was annoyed when he wouldn't, but of course I would never just tell him. Not in the moment, at least. No, I would just shove everything down until I couldn't anymore and I would eventually just burst out with it, everything I'd been keeping pent up since the last time I'd exploded, and then the cycle would repeat over and over, like clockwork.

I guess I just always feel as if I have to make myself the martyr. It's easy maybe, to blame that on my parents, the weight of the expectations and responsibilities they put on me at a young age, but even when that eventually let up and I could set it down, I realized that I didn't know who I was without it. At that point I was too scared to try and find out, and the more time that's passed, the less likely it seems that I ever will."

IN-DEPTH HEADCANON QUESTIONS

[delilahcarreno]

👄 + rafael!

"Rafael was...well, the kind of boy who asks you to marry him at nineteen and you can't help but say yes. Clearly I couldn't. Sometimes I look back now and think what was the rush? It wasn't like we were saving ourselves for each other, which I know is what everyone back then assumed--though, anyone who actually was there to see how all over each other we were those three months would be able to tell that definitely had not been the case.

I think it was a combination of things, this sort of perfect storm of feeling older than I was and yet simultaneously like I was lagging behind everyone else, all on top of being in love for the first time, the thrill of someone finally choosing and thinking about me for once, of getting to choose something for myself for once...so he asked, and I said yes. To this day it's still the easiest decision I'd ever made."

"That doesn't mean the rest of it was easy. We both made mistakes. That's another misconception people make, I think: that there must've been some big catalyst for the divorce, infidelity or some secret addiction or that we'd woken up one day and realized we'd fallen out of love.

None of that's true, of course. Sometimes I wonder if it'd have hurt more or less if it were, that at least there'd be a tangible reason or party to blame for things ending rather than simply realizing we just weren't working. It wasn't just us we had to think about, either. Sophie deserved two parents who put her well being and happiness first, and as much as we'd maybe tried to convince ourselves that we were doing just that by staying together, it became glaringly obvious once we were apart that it was what was best for our family.

That's not to say that that distance always stayed so...distant. There was a brief period where we thought about trying again, after Theo had been born...it was a confusing time for all of us, to say the least. I think it was my guilt that kept us from working, that time, the last time, like I purposely was trying to get in my own way. Hurting Ben, confusing Sophie, dragging Rafael into it all...it didn't seem right that I could get another chance I didn't feel I deserved.

I think I've just accepted that there's always going to be a lingering what if in the back of my mind when it comes to him, because being wrong is not worth blowing up our beautiful family over. He's a wonderful father and co-parent, and being able to witness him grow into this man he's become from the nineteen year old I first fell for all those years ago has easily been one of the greatest privileges of my life."

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