#they vaguely reprimanded me and my coworker and said if this continues 'one of us' aka i am going to go.

[sotiriabellou]

itd honestly be so funny if i got fired from this job in less than a week

[pulisicsgirl]

silence is deafening - mason mount

summary: after a fight with Mason digs up memories she'd rather forget, Y/N is left to deal with trauma from her past and decide if she will let Mason in

pairing: Mason Mount x reader

word count: 5.1k

warnings/tags: angst, hurt/comfort, couple fight, !! in-depth description of childhood trauma !!, lack of communication, supportive Mase, everything will eventually be okay-- you all know I can't write a sad ending, not proofread (I'm so sorry)

requested: yes!! here

notes: back with another request!!! This one has been sitting in my inbox for a LONG time!! I've had the draft halfway written for SO long, but couldn't decide how to finish it until I was struck with a bit of inspiration earlier this week! I hope you all enjoy it!!

You rested your elbow on the counter, forehead placed in the palm of your hand as you used the other to scroll and click through the numerous emails in your inbox. You had a big deadline coming up for your work, and it seemed that the brunt of the responsibility for it had fallen unexpectedly on your shoulders. As a result, your coworkers were coming to you with all of their questions, new emails popping up in your inbox every hour. So here you were, sitting at the bar in the kitchen, legs tucked under you as you continued to work even after arriving at home from a full day’s work.

Your boss had been on your case for a few weeks now for a reason unknown to you, which put you on edge each day that you went into work, nervous to step a toe out of line and be reprimanded, or worse, fired. You feared that this project could be the breaking point if it didn’t work out, which only added to your nervousness. You had never let a project like this fall apart before, but the anxious thoughts swirling around your mind convinced you that this would be the day that you failed.

You were just closing the browser to open a spreadsheet when you heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. You vaguely heard Mason call out into the house and the sound of his keys dropping into the bowl by the front door, too focused on your work to comprehend what he had actually said.

The nerves seemed to have settled in your chest like a heavy weight, pressing onto your diaphragm as your eyes flicked between the seemingly endless list of numbers and data on your screen. Your head was beginning to ache, and you imagined that this is what drowning would feel like.

You were pulled from your thoughts as two hands slipped around your waist as Mason pulled you tightly into his chest.

“How’s my baby?” Mason mumbled into your neck, pressing kisses to the skin there, and as much as you usually enjoyed being greeted this way, you were feeling overwhelmed by the sudden contact.

“ ’m okay,” you mumbled in reply, wiggling a bit to try to pull from his grasp, but Mason didn’t get the message, keeping your back pressed to his firm chest, continuing to place kisses on your neck and shoulders, his beard tickling your skin. “Mase, please…”

“What are you working on, sweetheart?” he mumbled softly, pressing his nose into your cheek.

“It’s just a thing for work. The deadline’s actually coming up pretty soon.” You tried prying his hands from your waist, beginning to feel suffocated, but Mason didn’t seem to notice. If he did, he ignored it. “So I really need to work on—”

“Come on, just give me five minutes,” he spun your chair toward him so he could see your face. Placing his hands on your cheeks, he began peppering kiss all over—your forehead, nose, cheeks, chin. “Haven’t seen you all day. I just wanna –”

“Mason please!” Something in you snapped and you pushed his hands away from you. “Why can’t you just leave me alone for two seconds! I’m trying to work! Can’t you see that?”

Mason stumbled back a couple of steps, caught off guard by your outburst. You never called him by his full name, and you certainly never shouted at him. A look of hurt washed over his face, the grin that had previously played on his lips falling into a frown, eyebrows drawn together, and you instantly regretted your words. You didn’t mean them, but you were overwhelmed and simply lost your cool.

“Mase, I’m sorry, I-“ You rose from your chair quickly to apologize to him, reaching a hand out toward him, but he was already halfway out of the kitchen by the time you could move in his direction. Your heart sank in your chest as you watched him round the corner, heading down the hallway.

You dropped yourself back into the chair, resting your head in your hands as your eyes began to sting with tears. If you thought you had felt miserable before, you had surely made it worse now. You cursed yourself for letting your stress get the better of you and letting your job come between you and Mason. The despair that you felt sat on your ribcage like a weight as a few tears slipped down your cheeks.

You decided maybe it was best to give Mason a bit of space before you tried to apologize. You knew you had hurt his feelings. He often expressed to you that he feared being too clingy or smothering the other person in his relationships, but you had always reassured him that you loved it, finding solace in his presence and his touch. Until today, when you had snapped at him for doing the very thing you told him brought you peace.

It truly wasn’t that you didn’t want him to touch you. In fact, in this moment, there was nothing you wanted more. You were feeling overwhelmed and had failed to communicate that.

With slightly puffy eyes you wiped the tear streaks from your cheeks, pulling your computer in front of you, determined to finish the work you had laid out for you so that you could spend the rest of your evening making it up to Mason. That proved difficult, though, with anxious thoughts about your relationship swirling around your head, now contributing to the anxiety you felt over your job.

You felt things getting progressively worse—your heart speeding up, the shaking in your hands getting more intense, and you were having trouble concentrating at all.

After about a half an hour, you heard Mason’s soft footsteps as his sock-clad feet padded down the hallway. Your heart skipped a beat, trying to quickly collect your thoughts so you could articulate to him just how sorry you were for what you had said and how you had acted.

But as Mason turned the corner into the kitchen, it was clear he hadn’t come to talk to you, not even sparing you a glance as he walked over to the fridge. Your voice caught on the lump in your throat, surprised by his cold demeanor.

“M-Mase?”

Your call to him was left unanswered as opened the refrigerator door, bending down to grab a bottle of water from the shelf. He uncapped the bottle, taking a drink from it as he walked back out of the room without a word.

Your lower lip wobbled, and you felt the tears welling up in your eyes. You closed your computer, knowing that you were going to get nothing more done, dropping your head to rest on your forearms on the countertop. You tried to muffle the sobs that shook your body, not wanting to guilt Mason into comforting you. You got yourself into this situation and would have to figure out how to deal with it.

It took another half hour for you to calm yourself, your crying finally ceasing. You took a few minutes, trying to make it appear as though you hadn’t spent the last 30 minutes crying in the kitchen before you decided to “pull up your big girl pants” and go find Mason.

You walked slowly and reluctantly down the hallway, first checking in your shared bedroom and finding both it and the ensuite bathroom empty. As you walked back into the hallway, you heard a noise coming from Mason’s gaming room and decided that must be where you’d find him.

You knocked softly on the door to alert him to your presence before you pushed the door open slowly. Mason was facing to your left, looking at the TV where he was playing FIFA, and only the side of his face was visible to you. Once again, he didn’t look toward you, focusing on his game without so much as a glance in your direction.

You took a couple of steps toward him, playing with your fingers in front of you as you moved to a position where you knew he could at least see you out of the corner of his eye.

“M-Mase? Can w-we talk?” Your voice was shaky as you spoke, but you took a deep breath, determined not to cry again. “Please?”

You waited, but there was no response. The clear shakiness of your voice earned a brief glance in your direction, but nothing more.

“Mason?”

Nothing.

All at once, a wave of emotions and painful memories hit you, the silent treatment from Mason taking you back to a time in your life that you had resolved to leave in your past.

Before you could stop it, a sob left your lips, and you clasped a hand over your mouth to silence it, rushing out of the room. You closed the door a little more harshly than you had intended to, soft cries leaving your lips as you raced down the hallway to find somewhere—anywhere—where you could get some fresh air and breathe for a moment.

Before you could even think, you had rushed to the front door, slipping on the trainers you had left there and grabbing your keys. You were out the door quickly, fighting back tears as you turned the keys in the ignition. You weren’t sure where you were even going to go, you just needed to find somewhere to be alone.

*

Almost as soon as you had left him alone in his gaming room, Mason knew something was really off. The two of you had fought before, but you had never reacted to it the way you had when you ran out of the room.

He had resolved to give you the cold shoulder, feeling hurt by the way you had pushed him away so harshly. But his concern for you outweighed his need to get you to apologize. He hadn’t been able to keep himself from glancing in your direction when your voice shook as you spoke. You had never sounded so afraid to address him, and that simple fact was eating away at him. He had soon after turned off the console, wandering out of his gaming room in search of you.

The house was eerily quiet as he moved through the hallway, checking in each room that he passed to see if you were there. When he entered the kitchen, noticing your computer lying closed on the countertop, he furrowed his brows. After not finding you anywhere else in the house, he had been sure you would be back in the kitchen, working on whatever it was that had you so stressed out.

Your shoes and keys missing from the walkway told him you had left, and he felt his heart sink a little. He had been hoping to find you and work this out quickly, hating the way he felt when there was distance between the two of you.

After debating whether to text or call to check on you, Mason settled on a quick text, afraid of suffocating you further. He wandered into the kitchen, aimlessly rummaging through the fridge and the cabinets as he waited for you to reply. He was restless, checking the screen of his phone every few seconds to see if a text from you had popped up, but nothing came through.

It wasn’t long before he threw caution to the wind, dialing your number without caring if you would be frustrated with him. The nerves caused by your brief argument and not knowing where you were was causing his worry to spike and he couldn’t keep himself from calling.

The line rang for several long moments before the automated voice began telling him you were unavailable.

He hung up, blowing air out in frustration and tossing his phone onto the counter before he plopped down in one of the chairs at the countertop. For a few moments, he just stared at the chair you had been sitting in when he had first arrived home—the place you had been sitting when you’d shouted at him.

His heart clenched in his chest at the recent memory. You had never reacted that way to him before, and it bothered him more than he cared to admit. The negative thoughts began to swirl in his mind, feeling like a cloud of despair.

 He felt small. He felt like he was overbearing. He worried that you had grown sick of him and simply didn’t want him around anymore.

As tears sprung to his eyes, Mason’s level-headed side began to prevail.

Yes, you had never reacted that way to him before, so that had to mean that something had triggered it.

Everything had been fine when he’d cuddled up to you in bed that morning, and he was equally as touchy and clingy as the two of you had gotten ready for the day, so something had to have changed between then and when he got home.

As he wracked his brain to remember what you had been saying before you’d snapped at him, he realized he couldn’t really recall what you’d told him. He hadn’t really been paying attention, he realized.

He dropped his head into his hands, elbows resting on the countertop, as the shame washed over him. Perhaps this all could’ve been avoided if he’s just paid attention to what you had been trying to tell him.

With another sigh, Mason picked his phone up from where he had tossed it on the counter, dialing your number again.

And again, he was met with no response.

*

You hadn’t actually gone far on your drive, only making it about 10 minutes before you pulled off into a mostly empty parking lot, parked at the back where it was the most deserted, and broke down into sobs.

You felt silly for crying so much about receiving the cold shoulder from your boyfriend, but it had brought up so many memories and feelings you had done your best to repress.

The environment you had grown up in was… less than inviting. In your house, children were treated as more of a nuisance than a blessing. You were made to feel that unless you were bringing some sort of value to others, you didn’t deserve anything. Love was something that had to be earned, not something unconditional that was shared between a parent and child.

Silent treatment was something that your mother had often used to signal that she was upset with you. From a very young age, longer than you can remember, when she would begin to ignore you when you spoke to her or tugged at the hem of her shirt to get her attention, it meant you had to scramble to find a way to earn her love.

So, seeing Mason doing the very same had taken you right back to that time. You had once again felt like a young child, scrambling to prove that you deserved the love of another.

Of course, you realized that there was no way for Mason to know this would have bothered you the way it did. He knew that your relationship with your parents was now non-existent because of the circumstances of your upbringing, but he didn’t know the full extent of what they had put you through. You hadn’t gathered the strength to tell him all of those details yet.

So you had done the only thing you could think of to do in that moment, and you ran away—something you most certainly regretted now. But you didn’t want Mason to feel guilty for making you cry when you knew you had been in the wrong, so you sat in that empty parking lot for as long as it took you to calm yourself down.

You allowed yourself to sit there and feel miserable on your own for a while, but you knew you’d have to go back to face Mason soon. You knew he was probably worried, but you had turned your phone off after his first call came through. You felt even more guilty as a result, but you had been unable to deal with reassuring him of your safety at that moment.

It was dark outside by the time you walked back in the front door, closing it behind you quietly. You slipped your shoes off, placed your keys in the bowl, and hesitated a moment in the entry.

The soft jingle of your keys had alerted Mason to your presence, and he practically jumped up from his seat at the counter where he had remained the entire time, feeling miserable as he tried to call you nearly every 30 minutes.

Mere seconds passed before Mason darted quickly around the corner to find you standing there, still about 10 feet away from him.

His stomach sank to his feet at the sight of your red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks. It was clear you had spent the entire time you were gone crying.

At the sight of him standing carefully at a distance, the feeling of guilt overwhelmed you, and tears sprung to your eyes.

“M-Mase, I’m so sorry, I-“ you stumbled over your words, the first tears spilling down your cheeks. “I shouldn’t have-“

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Mason was standing in front of you in an instant, cradling your face with his hands. His thumbs swiped over your cheeks, wiping away the tears that had fallen. “It’s okay, don’t worry. You-“

“No,” you asserted, shaking your head as you held onto his forearms to steady yourself. “No, it’s not okay, please let me apologize.”

Mason’s heart squeezed as you gazed up at him with wide eyes, and he could tell you were trying to stop your lower lip from quivering, but to no avail.

You took a deep breath, in through your nose and blowing the air out slowly through your mouth to try to gather yourself, wanting to be sure that you remembered every part of the apology that you had mentally composed on your way home.

“Mase, I’m so sorry for snapping at you,” you looked up at his face as you spoke, watching as he drew his brows together with a sad expression on his face. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did, and I shouldn’t have shouted. Work has been awful these last couple of weeks, and my boss has been giving me absolute hell. I think it all just built up.”

Mason nodded at you, and you could tell from his soft expression that he understood what you were saying.

You continued, “It’s not an excuse, I just want you to know that it wasn’t you that was bothering me. I just unfairly took my bad day out on you. I don’t feel like you’re too much—ever—I just… I needed a bit of space, and I should’ve just told you that.”

You could see his face physically relax as the relief washed over him, and you felt even more guilty knowing he had been sitting with those thoughts of self-doubt ever since you had left.

“I’m really sorry,” you finished with a whisper as Mason brushed his thumb softly over your bottom lip.

Without warning, Mason pulled you into a tight hug, wrapping his arms around your shoulders, making you feel completely enveloped by him—and the feeling was the greatest relief you could ever remember feeling. He buried his face in your neck, and you could feel a couple of warm tears against your skin.

The two of you stood there in the entryway, clinging onto each other like you’d vanish into thin air if you let go. Mason’s hot breath fanned against your neck, and you closed your eyes, drinking in the feeling of being so close to him.

“Thank you,” Mason whispered after a few moments. “Thank you for talking to me.”

You squeezed him in response.

“And I’m sorry for being so childish,” he pulled his face back, still holding you in his arms. “I shouldn’t have just ignored you like that. I should have told you how I was feeling, too.”

You brought your hand up to cradle his cheek, pressing a smile to your lips despite the your eyes still being wet with tears.

“It’s okay, Mase, you couldn’t…” you hesitated for a moment, struggling with the idea of opening that part of yourself up to him. But you knew it was a conversation that was well overdue, so you pushed out of your comfort zone. “You couldn’t have known that it would bother me so much.”

Mason remain quiet, turning his head to place a gentle kiss on the skin of your palm, sensing that you had more to say.

You swallowed the lump in your throat. “Um… so y-you know that my relationship with my parents really fell apart after I was able to move out, and… um…”

You hesitated, feeling frustrated with yourself for struggling to open yourself up. Here Mason stood—the perfect boyfriend, really. He had never judged you for any of your struggles or for anything from your past. He had been nothing but supportive and compassionate since you had first met him. Despite all of this, those nagging thoughts that you weren’t deserving of it all would persist no matter how hard you tried to push them away.

As Mason realized that this was becoming a conversation that would likely require a lot of time, he pulled away from you slightly, taking both of your hands in his as he led you to the living room. He sat down on the couch, opening his arms up to you so you could sit however you felt most comfortable, wanting to put your troubled mind at ease however he could.

Feeling a desperate need to remain close to him, you wound up placing yourself on Mason’s lap, facing him with your knees settled on either side of his hips. Your arm naturally found their place wrapped loosely around his neck, and he placed his hands on your hips, alternating between brushing his thumbs against your waist and rubbing his hands over your thighs.

You took a minute to compose yourself again, staring at the front of Mason’s t-shirt as you didn’t feel confident enough to look him in the eye. Mason remained quiet, continuing his gentle pattern over your legs as he allowed you to have that moment. He could tell that there was a lot weighing on you, even beyond the stress that your job had been causing you.

When you were able to gather your thoughts, you began speaking softly, and you told Mason everything.

You told him about your childhood and the nature of the relationships you’d had with your parents. You told him about the sudden changes in your mother’s disposition and how she would be happy one moment and hateful toward you the next. You explained your long history with the “silent treatment” and how you now realized that was a trigger for you. You were honest with him about the uncertainty that you felt about yourself and about your relationships as a result of this kind of upbringing.

“My mother, she… actually reached out to me last week,” you mumbled. By the time you had finished recounting your life story to Mason, you had cast your eyes down to your lap where you were playing with your fingers, unable to bring yourself to look at his face. “It’s the first time she’s done that since I left home years ago. I don’t really feel like I’m ready to reply to her yet, but I think it’s just dug up a lot of feeling and memories that I tried to bury for so long.”

Mason’s silence as you stopped speaking only made you more nervous. Hesitantly, you looked up to his face, but the pity you expected to find in his eyes was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Mason had a look of pure admiration in his eyes.

“Please say something, Mase.”

He brought his hand up to your cheek, brushing your skin gently as he gave you a tearful smile.

“You’re so incredibly strong, Y/N.”

His reply took you by surprise, as, for seemingly the hundredth time that night, tears spring to your eyes.

“Really?” your voice shook as you spoke.

He nodded. “You went through all of that, and you’re still the kindest soul I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.”

You couldn’t stop the sob that left your lips as you fell forward into Mason, tucking yourself into his chest. His arms immediately were wrapped around your body, your shoulders shaking as you cried into his neck.

You weren’t sure how long the two of you sat there. Your cries eventually diminished into soft sniffles as you remained with your face tucked into Mason’s neck. He slowly trailed his fingers over your back, rubbing soothing shapes and patterns, and after all of the crying and how emotionally drained you felt after reliving the trauma of your past, you felt like you could fall asleep right there.

When you had finally settled a bit more, Mason enveloped you in his arms again, squeezing you gently as he pressed a kiss into your hair.

“Thank you, Y/N,” his voice was no higher than a whisper. “Thank you for telling me all of that.”

Lacking the energy to reply in that moment, you shifted slightly so that you could place a kiss on his collarbone in a silent thanks for listening and understanding you on a level that no one else ever had.

You sat there for a while, allowing yourself to just relax into your boyfriend’s body as he held you. As you rested there, you knew that there was nowhere else in the world that you’d rather be.

Feeling your muscles soften and noticing that your eyes had slipped closed, Mason knew you would soon fall asleep and decided that the two of you should go on up to bed.

He shifted you off of his lap gently, trying to disturb your peace as little as possible. He stood, bending over to pick you up from the couch, and carried you bridal style toward the stairs and up into your shared bedroom.

He took you into the ensuite bathroom and placed you gently on the counter. After grabbing the skincare products he had observed you using over the many nights that you had spent together, he set out, following your nighttime regimen as closely as he could remember. He took a couple of cotton pads, dampening them with your cleanser and swiping them over your cheeks, forehead, and nose. He pumped a bit of the moisturizer on his fingers and gently rubbed it into your skin. Your eyes slipped closed, and his soft touch nearly lulled you back to sleep, sitting there on the countertop.

Mason only left you alone for a moment as you brushed your teeth and he wandered into the bedroom. You could hear him moving around but didn’t have the energy to find out what he was doing. Just as you had finished rinsing out your mouth in the sink, he reappeared behind you, having changed into a loose pair of joggers and discarding his shirt, sliding his arms around your waist as you stood up straight.

You relaxed back into Mason’s touch, pressing your back into his bare chest and letting your head fall back onto his shoulder.

For a moment you stood there, drinking each other in. Mason swayed you gently back and forth as he pressed his cheek to the side of your head, his body radiating warmth from behind you. With your eyes closed, you focused on the feeling of him pressed up against you, arms holding you securely as the gentle pace of his swaying calmed the remainder of the racing thoughts in your mind.

Even with your eyes closed, you could feel the tears springing to them as you thought of how thankful you were to have Mason in your life—how thankful you were that he was your person. You had always known that he was someone special, even from the first moment that you met him. But now, having explained to him the entirety of your childhood and all of the difficulties that came with it, you just felt that much close to him and that much more appreciative if who Mason was.

Kind, forgiving, understanding, gentle—you could have gone on for the rest of the night listing all of the characteristics that made Mason the most perfect man you’d even known.

You twisted in Mason’s hold, tucking your face into his neck so he wouldn’t see the tears spilling over once again. You folded your arms between your bodies as he held you close, allowing him to completely envelop you in his hold.

After another moment, Mason placed a gentle kiss to your temple. “Come on, love. Let’s get to bed.”

You nodded, shivering from the cold as he unwrapped his arms from you.

You followed him back into the bedroom, noticing that the sheets had been pulled back, the pillows arranged just how you liked them, and the shirt that Mason had previously been wearing just before was folded on your side of the bed. Your heart warmed at the small acts of service Mason had done for you.

After you’d undressed yourself, slipping Mason’s t-shirt over your head, you crawled into the bed and placed yourself right next to Mason, who was now clad in only his boxers. He pulled the sheets and the duvet up, tucking them over your bodies before he lay down and pulled you into his arms.

With Mason’s arm wrapped around your body, you lay with your head on his bare chest, listening to the soft and steady beating of his heart. It only took a few seconds of you laying there before Mason had slipped his hand under the hem of your shirt, trailing his fingers over your back and reveling in the feel of  your skin against his. Your legs were tangled under the sheets as the two of you lay in silence, content to be completely wrapped up in one another.

The silence was only broken as you whispered into the night air a few moments later. “Thank you, Mase. For everything.” You pressed a gentle kiss to his chest.

“Anything for you, my love,” he replied softly, squeezing your shoulders. “Anything at all.”

tag list: @landoslover @thoseboysinblue @lovelynikol16 @swimmingismywholelife @masonsrem @bracedes @neverinadream @lizzypotter14 @notsoattractivearenti @chilwellspulisic @mm-vii @10vnderhaze

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