#or else I would've continued to fixate and have anxiety about it

[mari-beau]

Why do I ever post anything on Facebook? I always regret it.

[bi-bard]

If I Could Leave, I Would've Already Left - Luca Imagine [The Bear]

Title: If I Could Leave, I Would've Already Left

Pairing: Luca X Reader

Based On: Paul Revere

Word Count: 1,413 words

Warning(s): mention of breakdown/mental health issues

Summary: When Luca left for Copenhagen, he didn't mean to leave (Y/n) completely on their own. After years of not talking, he finally finds that nerve to reconnect with them, deciding to invite them out to visit. At first, all seems well, but something is clearly off... Luca just has to get (Y/n) to admit that.

Author's Note: I changed who this story was going to be about so I could give y'all this. Don't say that I don't do anything for you.

NOAH KAHAN - STICK SEASON [WE'LL ALL BE HERE FOREVER] WRITING CHALLENGE MASTERLIST

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I felt a pit in my stomach as I walked to the door of the restaurant.

This wasn't even my place of employment. I had no obligations or expectations here, but I still had raging anxiety sitting in my chest.

Maybe it was the association I had with early rising and restaurant doors. Maybe it was the memories of yelling and pressure and intensity. Maybe it wasn't related to any of that. Maybe it was all just fear over seeing someone that I hadn't seen in a while that meant the world to me.

I shook my head, trying to calm myself down. It wasn't successful.

Once I accepted that I couldn't just dismiss my anxiety, I picked up my hand and knocked on the door.

I stepped backward, taking a few more deep breaths.

The front door opened suddenly. I felt a need to collapse to the ground when I saw Luca in the doorway. I fought that need.

"Hey," I said awkwardly, messing around with the strap of my duffel bag.

"You made it," he replied happily, stepping forward to hug me tightly. I closed my eyes as I hugged him back. "I told you to call me when you were on your way. I would have made plans to get you settled."

"I know, I know," I muttered as I stepped back.

"I'll call someone in, so I can get you set up in the guest room-"

"No, no," I shook my head. "I came here to see where you're working. That was your offer."

He chuckled. "Well, come on in then."

I followed him into the restaurant. I looked around at the sparkling location. Shining counters, organized inventory, the blue sign just under the clock that read 'Every Second Counts'.

"What do you think," he asked.

"It's beautiful," I mumbled, still looking around the entire building.

"Oh, believe me, this is nothing," he waved it off. I looked back at him. "Well, nothing when compared to the quality of the food."

I chuckled. "Impress me."

"I always do."

He tapped a part of the steel tabletop so I could stand across from him. He continued working while I put my bag down next to me.

It felt weird to watch someone else cook. I had grown so accustomed to running around the kitchen and getting as much work done as physically possible. But now, I was standing there, twiddling my thumbs. It just felt... wrong.

"Do you... Do you need help with anything," I asked.

"No, no," he shook his head. "I am making something for you. You are on a trip."

I held my hands up. "Alright, alright."

The silence after that was nice.

It was the first time since getting on the flight that I didn't find myself fixated on the work that I was missing. I was finally letting myself breathe. I couldn't relax fully. I don't think that I had the ability to. It was still momentary bliss.

"How've you been," Luca said after a while.

"Good, good," I replied, playing it as polite. Like I would speak with my relatives at big family dinners and shit like that.

"You're still working in Chicago?"

"I haven't worked there in a while," I explained. "I moved to New York. Carmen Berzatto apparently mentioned my name a while ago."

"He did?"

I nodded.

"I don't remember him ever being that kind... did he have a change of heart?"

"Honestly, I think it was an accident."

Luca laughed, having to stop what he was doing for a few moments. "That sounds more like him."

I chuckled with him.

"But New York is good?"

"Yeah, yeah. It's the dream, right? The big-time restaurant and the fancy guests."

"I guess so."

His eyes moved to me. I saw them trace me, looking for a sign of... something. I shifted a bit in my spot, grinning at him. I wanted to know what he was looking for. I wanted to know what he was thinking of me.

"How are you doing," he said.

"You asked that already."

"I know but you told me that everything is good yet you're sitting in front of me on a very sudden trip to a different country."

"You invited me out to visit-"

"Yet you didn't tell me when you were on your way."

I froze. He was right.

"What's going on?"

I took a deep breath. "I... I took a leave of absence."

"What," he asked. "Can I ask why?"

"I... I broke," I confessed.

Admitting it felt like some kind of betrayal to myself. I was already dealing with enough guilt from running away from work, but now there was even more guilt because it wasn't just because of my own weakness.

"I was in the kitchen, in the middle of dinner rush, and then everything felt like it froze," I continued. "And I... I couldn't move or talk. I was just... gone. And then, it all hit me at once. I couldn't breathe. Nothing made sense. Everything was going too fast. It just... it wouldn't go back to normal.

"If it had just been that once, then I could have explained it away as nothing. But it just kept happening over and over.

"I could hide it for a while but then, I just kind of snapped. I ran out of the kitchen; I hid in the alley out back and just sobbed. I just remember thinking that I had to get out. So, I decided to take the leave of absence and try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me."

"I'm sorry," Luca said. "That sounds terrifying."

I just kind of shrugged.

"Are you... Are you seeing a therapist at all?"

"I have an appointment set for when I get home. I just... I needed something- someone familiar."

Luca stepped out from behind the counter so he could drag me into another tight hug. I closed my eyes, hiding my face in his shoulder. That was the most detail I had told anyone about how I had been feeling.

"Can I ask you something," he asked after a little while. I hummed. "Why don't you just leave entirely?"

I scoffed as I stepped back. "And go where?"

"I don't know... here?"

I shook my head.

"I could put in a good word-"

"I can't do that," I stopped him. "I can't just run away."

"Why not?"

"Do you have any idea how hard I have worked for this?" I snapped. "How much of my life has been dedicated to this?"

"That doesn't mean that you have to end up hurting yourself!"

"You don't get it!" I stepped even farther away. "I don't just do this for me. New York is the best place for me to make everyone happy. It's for my family whether it be supporting them or giving my mom a chance to see her dream that she didn't get to pursue or for my dad to get the chance to be proud of me. All of this goes so far beyond me! It's not that I don't want to leave! I can't!"

Luca didn't reply.

"I... I look at my parents and all I can think of is how disappointed they'd be if I didn't keep going, keep pushing myself."

"I'm... I'm sorry."

I looked away before stubbornly wiping away any tears that found their way to my eyes. "I'll... I'll leave it all one day. I'll leave all of it behind and find something that doesn't terrify me as much, but I just... I can't yet. I can't."

"I shouldn't have pushed so hard," he replied. "I... I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," I mumbled, running my hands over my face. "Can we just... Can we focus on literally anything else?"

He nodded, going to step around the counter again. "I've thought about you a lot over the last few years."

"Really," I asked.

"Yeah. I... I always felt... wrong for leaving the way that I did. I felt like I had abandoned you."

"If it helps, I never thought that. I just hoped that you were happy."

He offered a grin in response.

He started working again.

As silence surrounded us, the air seemed to shift. The weight wasn't gone. I don't think it ever would be. But it was lighter. As if I wasn't holding it on my own anymore.

And maybe that extra pair of hands was all I needed for now.

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[clefclefairy]

for that ask game 🔥 gimme your absolute pettiest pokemon opinion(s) i'm talking that shit that no one else has even thought about yet it Compels you 🔥

okay here goes. one of the broadest hot takes i have is: there IS no pokemon fandom, in a singular, unified sense. this is literally the most sprawling multimedia franchise conglomerate on the planet earth. i can literally spend tens of hours explaining glitch pokemon but if you ask me the basic rules of the TCG i will throw up and cry. I have played and finished literal dozens of Pokemon romhacks that have their own separate fandoms that will never be touched by 90% of the pokemon fanbase and that STILL gives them an audience of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. i havent played pokemon ranger for more than fifteen minutes. i can tell you about ADV OU and RBY OU and weather wars and aldarons proposal and etc etc etc but i only play VGC sparingly. pokemon masters is an entire separate continuity of lore that i refuse to touch bc i can't do gacha for my own sanity. i do still need to watch some story cutscenes, though. Pokemon collosseum and gale of darkness were incredibly important to the era of fandom i flourished as a BNF in; now they are like ancient, weathered scrolls in a language modern players do not speak.

a horrifying amount of 20 year olds only started during the DS era of games. there's an entire spate of time that, to me, is so crucial to my experience and embrace of pokemon that literally millions of people did not and can not experience in the same way. What does pokemon feel like to them? It can't feel the same way that it does to me. maybe that's true of everything. there are literal millions of pokemon go players who haven't touched a mainline game in 20 years or more. to say nothing of its own hideous vile wretched PVP meta. there are people who consider themselves pokemon fans and can only recognize like 500 of them. max. and yet they are pokemon fans, right? they enjoy the series? because after a certain point what can you ask of people? To be in this fandom is to grab at a few of Arceus' thousand arms and shape your universe therein. how can I even begin to understand this as a fandom when it's just this part of my life and has been almost since I was born? What about people who play Mystery Dungeon? What about Pokemon Conquest?

Also people were and are super fucking weird about Kieran, holy shit. This is a slightly less underdiscussed point but I was genuinely stunned by the amount of people calling him an incel or comparing him to a school shooter because, as related to my point above, i don't really participate in broader "pokemon fandom" because how can you? girl he is a 15 year old with an anxiety disorder and you stole his horse girl movie plot right out from underneath him. I think he's allowed to be a bit of a bitch about it! It is also really annoying that a satisfying conclusion to that plot was and is impossible because it would break away from one of Pokemon's core, integral mechanics, which is that Everything Important Is Yours. Is that mechanic as a core element worth discussing? I'd say so. Not even necessarily getting rid of, just reckoning with how it is going to inevitably leave certain plots frustrated because like. By all rights Kieran should've gotten Terapagos, right? Since we got Ogrepon? Parallels? And it would've felt a little less like I did just steal some kid's sacred relic slash autistic fixation if he also stole mine? And then I stop and think, does this feel that way to the children playing it?

I will never be a child playing Pokemon again. What does that change in perspective keep me from understanding now? What do I know and interpret and learn now from my experience of Pokemon that I couldn't possibly then? is it inevitably lesser? sometimes it feels that way. like the beats of my life are tied less tight to the Pokemon games I played and the Pokemon I cared for when I did. is that a bad thing? probably not. that's just life. but...do I miss it?

doesn't everyone?