#this girl i had a job with in 2019 has it and. shes always been a little weird in a specific way that does not mesh with me-- | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bauliya · 21 days ago

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it’s funny how a trans woman acting even slightly horny on this site is chased off for being a groomer posthaste but the actual groomer and rapist targeting primarily young vulnerable female fans has a dedicated fandom. very cool of you.

(full article below the cut. photos removed)

SCARLETT PAVLOVICH WAS A 22-year-old drama student when she met the performer Amanda Palmer by chance on the streets of Auckland. It was a gray, drizzly afternoon in June 2020, and Palmer, then 44, was walking down the street with the actress Lucy Lawless, one of the most famous people in New Zealand owing to her six-season stint portraying Xena the warrior princess. But Pavlovich noticed only Palmer. She’d watched her TED Talk, “The Art of Asking,” and was fascinated by the cult-famous feminist writer and musician—by her unabashed self-assurance.

On the surface, Pavlovich appeared to be self-assured as well. A local girl, she had dropped out of high school at 15 to travel to Europe, Morocco, and the Middle East on the cheap, pausing in Scotland—where Tilda Swinton gave her a scholarship to attend her Steiner school, Drumduan—and London to work in the cabaret scene. Eventually, her visa expired and she ran out of money and so, in 2019, she returned to Auckland, where she enrolled in an acting school and took a job at a perfumery. Pale and dark-haired and waifish, she favored bold colors and outrageous outfits. On the day she met Palmer—on most days then—she’d painted a triangle of translucent silver beneath her lower lashes so it looked as though she’d been crying tears of glitter. It was Pavlovich who approached Palmer on the sidewalk outside the perfumery. She was surprised when Palmer texted her a few days later. “It’s amanda d palmer,” she wrote. “Your new friend.”

Palmer, an obsessive chronicler of her own life in songs, poems, blog posts, and a memoir, got her start as half of the punk cabaret band the Dresden Dolls, but she is perhaps more famous for her ability to attract a tight-knit and devoted following wherever she goes. In 2012, she became the first musician to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter and later became one of Patreon’s most successful artists. As Palmer explained in her book The Art of Asking— part memoir, part manifesto on the virtues of asking for assistance of various kinds—she had built her entire career on “messy exchanges of goodwill and the swapping of favors.” Out of this mess, she argues, a utopian sort of community formed: “There was no distinction between fans and friends.”

Over the following year and a half, Palmer and Pavlovich occasionally met for a drink or a meal. Palmer offered Pavlovich tickets to her shows and invited her to parties for the Patreon community at her house on nearby Waiheke Island, a lush bohemian retreat with vineyards, golden beaches, and more than 60 helipads to accommodate the billionaires who vacationed there. Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors—help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child. Pavlovich was happy to assist. She had a crush on Palmer. She didn’t mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash. For Pavlovich, who was estranged from her family and without a safety net, Palmer filled a deeper need. In November 2020, Palmer invited her to hang out at her place for a weekend with a group of local artists. At the gathering, Palmer asked Pavlovich to babysit while she got a massage. Early the next morning, Pavlovich wrote a diary entry about the easy intimacy she’d felt in Palmer’s sun-drenched home, where she’d read to Palmer’s son, who was 5 at the time, their limbs entwined. “The years absent of touch build up like a gray inheritance,” she wrote. “I’m hungry. I am so fucking famished.”

On February 1, 2022, Palmer texted Pavlovich and asked if she wanted to spend the weekend babysitting, which would mean bouncing back and forth between her house and her husband’s. Pavlovich had never met Palmer’s husband, from whom she was separated, though of course she knew who he was: Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author of nearly 50 books, including American Gods and Coraline, and the comic-book series The Sandman, whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Gaiman and Palmer had arrived in New Zealand in March 2020, but just weeks later, their nine-year marriage collapsed and Gaiman skipped town, breaking COVID protocols to fly to his home on the Isle of Skye. Now, he’d returned and was living in a house near Palmer’s on Waiheke. Their previous nanny had recently left, and they needed help. Pavlovich agreed and was pleased when Palmer offered to pay her for the weekend’s work.

Around four in the afternoon on February 4, Pavlovich took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke, then sat on a bus and walked through the woods until she arrived at Gaiman’s house, an asymmetrical A-frame of dark burnished wood with picture windows overlooking the sea. Palmer had arranged a playdate for the child, so not long after Pavlovich arrived, she found herself alone in the house with the author. For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch. Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds. A striking figure at 61, his wild black curls threaded with strands of silver, the author picked a fig—her favorite fruit—and handed it to her. Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza. Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rosé and then another. He drank only water. They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID. Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression. After she’d cleaned up their plates, Gaiman noted that there was still time before they would have to pick up his son from the playdate. “‘I’ve had a thought,’” she recalls him saying. “ ‘Why don’t you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden? It’s absolutely enchanting.’” Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed. He needed to make a work call, he said, and didn’t want Pavlovich to be bored.

Gaiman led Pavlovich down a stone path into the garden to an old-fashioned tub with a roll top and walked away. She got undressed and sank into the bath, looking up at the furry magenta blossoms of the pohutukawa tree overhead. A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaiman’s footsteps on the stones in the dark. She tried to cover her breasts with her arms. When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked. Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath. He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk. He bitched about Palmer’s schedule. He talked about his kid’s school. Then he told her to stretch her legs out and “get comfortable.”

“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay—it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”

Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’ ”

Afterward, Pavlovich crouched down in the water and tried to clean herself off. Gaiman looked at her and smiled. “‘Amanda told me I couldn’t have you,’ ” Pavlovich recalls him saying. As soon as he’d heard this, he “knew he had to have” her. “‘God,’ ” he continued, “ ‘I wish it were the good old days where we could both fuck you.’ ”

IN THE SANDMAN, the DC comic-book series that ran from 1989 to 1996 and made Gaiman famous, he tells a story about a writer named Richard Madoc. After Madoc’s first book proves a success, he sits down to write his second and finds that he can’t come up with a single decent idea. This difficulty recedes after he accepts an unusual gift from an older author: a naked woman, of a kind, who has been kept locked in a room in his house for 60 years. She is Calliope, the youngest of the Nine Muses. Madoc rapes her, again and again, and his career blossoms in the most extraordinary way. A stylish young beauty tells him how much she loved his characterization of a strong female character, prompting him to remark, “Actually, I do tend to regard myself as a feminist writer.” His downfall comes only when the titular hero, the Sandman, also known as the Prince of Stories, frees Calliope from bondage. A being of boundless charisma and creativity, the Sandman rules the Dreaming, the realm we visit in our sleep, where “stories are spun.” Older and more powerful than the most powerful gods, he can reward us with exquisite delights or punish us with unending nightmares, depending on what he feels we deserve. To punish the rapist, the Sandman floods Madoc’s mind with such a wild torrent of ideas that he’s powerless to write them down, let alone profit from them.

“THAT SAME VOICE THAT TOLD ME THOSE BEAUTIFUL STORIES when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

As allegations of Gaiman’s sexual misconduct emerged this past summer, some observers noticed Gaiman and Madoc have certain things in common. Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist. Like Madoc, Gaiman has racked up major awards (for Gaiman, awards in science fiction and fantasy as well as dozens of prizes for contemporary novels, short stories, poetry, television, and film, helping make him, according to several sources, a multimillionaire). And like Madoc, Gaiman has come to be seen as a figure who transcended, and transformed, the genres in which he wrote: first comics, then fantasy and children’s literature. But for most of his career, readers identified him not with the rapist, who shows up in a single issue, but with the Sandman, the inexhaustible fountain of story.

One of Gaiman’s greatest gifts as a storyteller was his voice, a warm and gentle instrument that he’d tuned through elocution lessons as a boy in East Grinstead, 30 miles south of London. In America, people mistakenly assumed he was an English gentleman. “He spoke very slowly, in a hypnotic way,” says one of his former students at the fantasy-writing workshop Clarion. He wrote that way, too, with rhythm and restraint, lulling you into a trance in the way that a bard might have done with a lyre. Another gift was his memory. He has “libraries full of books memorized,” one of his old friends tells me, noting that he could recall the page numbers of his favorite passages and recite them verbatim. His vast collection was eclectic enough to encompass both a box of comics (Spider-Man, Silver Surfer) from his boyhood and the works of Oscar Wilde he received as a gift for his bar mitzvah. For The Sandman, a forgotten DC property he had been hired to dust off and polish up, Gaiman gave the hero a makeover, replacing his green suit, fedora, and gas mask with the leather armor of an angsty goth, and surrounded him with characters drawn from the books he could pull off the shelves in his head, from timeless icons like Shakespeare and Lucifer to the obscure San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton. Norman Mailer called it “a comic strip for intellectuals.”

Gaiman and the Sandman shared a penchant for dressing in black, a shock of unruly black hair, and an erotic power seldom possessed by authors of comic books and fantasy novels. A descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gaiman had gotten his start in the ’80s as a journalist for hire in London covering Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and other brooding lords of rock, and in the world of comic conventions, he was the closest thing there was to that archetype. Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms. One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011. His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her. As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.” A woman fell to her knees and wept.

People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’ ” It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s. But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual. As one prominent editor in the field puts it, “The one thing I hear again and again, largely from women, is ‘He was always nice to me. He was always a gentleman.’ ” The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy. “He was hapless in a way that was kind of exasperating,” she says, “but also made him seem very harmless.” Someone who had a sexual relationship with Gaiman in the aughts recalls him flipping through questions fans wrote on cards at a Q&A session. Once, a fan asked if she could be his “sex slave”: “He read it aloud and said, ‘Well, no.’ He’d be very demure.”

But there were some who saw another side of the author. One woman, Brenda (a pseudonym), met Gaiman in the ’90s at a signing for The Sandman where she was working. On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual. He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine. After the Sandman signing, at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda. “Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me,” she says. A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a best-selling novelist. The night after the awards ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together. As soon as they began to hook up, the feeling that had drawn her to him—the magical spell of his interest in her individuality—vanished. “He seemed to have a script,” she tells me. “He wanted me to call him ‘master’ immediately.” He demanded that she promise him her soul. “It was like he’d gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.”

THIS PAST JULY, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. Since then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them. (Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.) I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs. I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence. Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. The youngest was 18. Two of them worked for him. Five were his fans. With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand. By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women. “Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy.

Katherine Kendall was 22 when she met Gaiman in 2012. She was volunteering at one of his events in Asheville, North Carolina. He invited her to join him a few days later at an after-party for another event, where he kissed her. The two struck up a flirtatious correspondence, emailing and Skyping in the middle of the night. Kendall didn’t want to have sex with Gaiman, and on one of their calls, she told him this. Afterward, she recorded his reply in her diary: “He had no designs on me beyond flirty friendship and I believe him thoroughly.” She’d grown up listening to his audiobooks, she later told Papillon DeBoer, the host of the podcast Am I Broken: “And then that same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were just friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

At a reading ten months later, Gaiman suggested that Kendall and two other girls wait for him on his tour bus so they could all hang out after he was done signing. When Gaiman showed up, he pulled Kendall into the back of the bus and lay on top of her. He kept saying, “Kiss me like you mean it,” Kendall remembers. She tried to get into it, but she was panicked. Eventually, Gaiman rolled off her. “‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “ ‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’ ” (Years later, Gaiman gave Kendall $60,000 to pay for therapy in an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone call, “to make up some of the damage.”)

Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time. Kendra Stout was 18 when, in 2003, she drove four and a half hours to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to see Gaiman read from Endless Nights, a follow-up to The Sandman. She met him in the signing line. Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video. Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date. He invited her back to his hotel room, put on a playlist of love songs, and held her down with one hand. Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful. When she said it hurt too much, he’d tell her the problem was she wasn’t submissive enough. “He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” she tells me. Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of “safe words” or “aftercare” or “limits.” He’d ask her to call him “master” and beat her with his belt. “These were not sexy little taps,” she says. When she told him she didn’t like it, she says he replied, “It’s the only way I can get off.”

Gaiman told Stout he had been introduced to these practices by a woman he’d met in his early 20s who had asked him to “whip her pussy.” At the time, he claimed to Stout, he was such a naïve Englishman that he thought she meant her cat. Then she handed him a flogger and told him to use it on her vagina. “‘This is what gets me off now,’ ” Stout recalls him saying. A similar anecdote shows up in an interview Gaiman gave for a 2022 biography of Kathy Acker, the late experimental punk writer Gaiman befriended in his 20s, but he offers a different account of how it affected him. When Acker asked him to “whip her pussy,” he found it “profoundly unsexual,” he told the interviewer. “I did it and ran away.” He identified himself as “very vanilla.”

In 2007, Gaiman and Stout took a trip to the Cornish countryside. On their last night there, Stout developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldn’t sit down. She told Gaiman they could fool around but that any penetration would be too painful to bear. “It was a big hard ‘no,’” she says. “I told him, ‘You cannot put anything in my vagina or I will die.’ ” Gaiman flipped her over on the bed, she says, and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers. She told him “no.” He stopped for a moment and then he penetrated her with his penis. At that point, she tells me, “I just shut down.” She lay on the bed until he was finished. (This past October, she filed a police report alleging he raped her.)

According to the podcast, which quoted Gaiman through his representatives, his position was that “sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.” (Gaiman declined to speak with me despite multiple requests, but through a legal representative, he responded to some claims.) If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases. The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him. But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing. An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of longstanding norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it. This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse. And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect. Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws. “Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”

AFTER GAIMAN GOT INTO the bathtub with Pavlovich, she retreated to Palmer’s house, which was vacant at the time. She sat in the shower for an hour, crying, then got into Palmer’s bed and began to search the internet for clues that might explain what had happened to her. She Googled “Me Too” and “Neil Gaiman.” Nothing. The only negative stories she found were about how he’d broken COVID lockdown rules in 2020 and had been forced to apologize to the people of the Isle of Skye for endangering their lives.

At the end of the weekend, Palmer texted Pavlovich to say how pleased she was to see Pavlovich and her child get along. “The universe is a karmic mystery,” Palmer wrote. “We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways.” Palmer asked if she could babysit again. She needed so much help. Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?

Pavlovich was living in a sublet that was about to end. She was broke and hadn’t been able to find a new apartment. She’d been homeless at the start of the pandemic, when the perfumery closed, and had ended up crashing on the beach in a friend’s sleeping bag on and off for the first two weeks of lockdown. The thought of returning to the beach filled her with dread.

She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family. Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.” One close family member beat her with a belt. Another would strangle Pavlovich when she got upset and slap her across the face until her cheeks were raw. She began to regularly cut her arms and wrists with a knife when she was 11. She became bulimic, then anorexic. By 13, Pavlovich had grown so thin that she ended up in a psychiatric unit at Auckland Children’s Hospital and spent weeks on a feeding tube. When she was 15, she left home and never went back.

In the years since, she had been looking for a new family, but many of the people she’d encountered in that search turned out to be abusive as well. “After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature sent from a celestial realm. It was like, Hallelujah,” Pavlovich tells me. Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same. In songs and essays, she had written of having been sexually assaulted and raped on multiple occasions as a teenager and young woman. Pavlovich didn’t think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.

Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience. The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do. “You’re not thinking in a linear or logical fashion,” Pavlovich says, “but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can.” Whatever had happened in the bath, she’d been through worse and survived, she thought. And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future. Palmer’s vision of herself as the central figure of a utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young, impressionable women she invited into her and her husband’s lives. “Her idealism could blind her to reality,” one friend says. (Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.) Palmer told Pavlovich they might travel to London together, and to Scotland, where Gaiman was shooting the second season of Good Omens. Pavlovich had wanted to leave New Zealand—her “epicenter of trauma”—for as long as she could remember. These conversations filled her head with fantasies “of finally being on solid ground in the world.”

After Palmer’s offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman: “I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into.” The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.

THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, Gaiman has written about terror from the point of view of a child. His most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, tells the story of a quiet and bookish 7-year-old boy. Through various unfortunate events, he ends up with a hole in his heart that can never be healed, a doorway through which nightmares from distant realms enter our world. Over the course of the tale, the boy suffers terribly, sometimes at the hands of his own family. At dinner one night, the boy refuses to eat the food his nanny has prepared. The nanny, the boy knows, isn’t really a human but a nightmare creature from another world. When his father demands to know why he won’t eat, the boy explains, “She’s a monster.” His father becomes enraged. To punish him, he fills the tub, then picks up the child, plunges him into the bath, and pushes his shoulders and head beneath the chilly water. “I had read many books in that bath,” the boy says. “It was one of my safe places. And now, I had no doubt, I was going to die there.” Later that night, the boy runs away from home; on his way out, he glimpses his father having sex with the monstrous nanny through the drawing-room window.

In various interviews over the years, Gaiman has called The Ocean at the End of the Lane his most personal book. While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said “that kid is me.” The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up. In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women. As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on. “I was going back to the 7-year-old me and giving myself a peculiar kind of love that I didn’t have,” he told an interviewer in 2017. “I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isn’t around anymore. He’s still there, hiding in a library somewhere, looking for a doorway that will lead him to somewhere safe where everything works.”

While Gaiman has identified the boy in the book as himself, he has also claimed that none of the things that happen to the boy happened to him. Yet there is reason to believe that some of the most horrifying events of the novel did occur. Gaiman has rarely spoken about a core fact of his childhood. In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 the church. By the late ’60s, David was the church’s public face and chief spokesperson in the U.K.

It was a challenging job, to say the least. The U.K., following the example of a handful of other governments, had issued a report declaring Scientology’s methods “a serious danger to the health of those who submit to them.” Hubbard would routinely punish members of the organization who committed minor infractions by binding them, blindfolding them, and throwing them overboard into icy waters. Back in England, David gave interviews to the press to smooth over such troubling accounts. The church was under particular pressure to assure the public it was not harming children. In his bulletins to members, Hubbard had made it clear that children were not to be exempt from the punishments to which adults were subjected. If a child laughed inappropriately or failed to remember a Scientology term, they could be sent to the ship’s hold and made to chip Scientology lingo, is what happens when you complete one of the lower levels of coursework.) What was happening away from the cameras is difficult to know, in part because Gaiman has avoided talking about it, changing the subject whenever an interviewer, or a friend, brings it up. But it seems unlikely that he would have been spared the disciplinary measures inflicted on adults and children as a standard practice at that time. According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology’s methods at home. When Neil was around the age of the child in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the person said, David took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and “drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air.”

As a teenager, Neil worked for the Church of Scientology for three years as an auditor, a minister of the church who conducts a process some have likened to hypnosis. One former member of the church who worked with Gaiman’s parents and was audited until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies.

David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology. They began studying Dianetics in 1956 and eventually took positions in the Guardian’s Office, a special department of the organization dedicated to handling the church’s growing number of legal cases, public communications, and intelligence operations. The mission of this office, as Hubbard wrote, was its “covert use in destroying the repute of individuals and groups.” On the side, the Gaimans ran the church’s canteen, lodged foreign Scientologists in their home, and opened a vitamin company in town, where they supplied courses of supplements for Scientology’s “detoxification” programs, a business that grew exponentially alongside the expansion of rust for days or confined in a chain locker for weeks at a time without blankets or a bathroom. In his book Going Clear, Lawrence Wright recounts the story of a 4-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted Black child who stole a Rolex and dropped it overboard. He was confined to the locker for two days and nights. When his mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, he “reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior.” (A representative for the Church of Scientology said it does not speak about members past or present but denies that this event occurred.)

David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public. In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC. When the reporter asked the child if Scientology made him “a better boy,” Neil replied, “Not exactly that, but when you make a release, you feel absolutely great.” (A release, in by Gaiman recalls him as precocious and ambitious. It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me. But the Gaimans were like “royalty,” he says. In 1981, David was promoted to lead the Guardian’s Office, making him one of the most powerful people in the church. But the same year, he fell from grace. A new generation of Scientologists, led by David Miscavige, who eventually succeeded Hubbard as the church’s leader, had Hubbard’s ear, and David was “caught in that grinder,” as his former colleague puts it. A document declaring David a “Suppressive person” was released a few years later. It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct. David, the document claims, put on a “front” of being “mild mannered and quite sociable,” adding that his actions “belie this.” His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris. “Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source,” it reads, referring to Hubbard.

In the ’80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp. It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer. Charming and strategic, he used the contacts he developed as a journalist to break into the business of genre writing, endearing himself to the giants of that world at the time: Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore. “When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah,” Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. “The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world.”

GAIMAN AND PALMER MET in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47. Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers. Gaiman was in the midst of finalizing a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had three children, and on the verge of breaking into Hollywood (nine of his works have been turned into movies or TV shows); Palmer was in a fight with her record label that would culminate in a split. Palmer had a collection of photos of herself posing as a murdered corpse and wanted Gaiman to write captions to go along with the pictures. Gaiman liked the idea, and the two met to work on the project, a book tied to her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. As Palmer described in The Art of Asking, they were not attracted to each other at first. “I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy.”

Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship. In an interview, he later said, “I got together with her because I couldn’t ever imagine being bored.” Palmer could. Ever since she’d gotten her start as a street busker, painting her face white and standing on a crate in Harvard Square dressed as a silent eight-foot-tall bride, she prided herself on a low-rent, bohemian lifestyle, couch-surfing when she toured, playing random shows in the living rooms of her fans. She had no savings and didn’t own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances. Gaiman owned multiple houses. He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old. And they didn’t have great sexual chemistry. But he appeared to be kind and stable, a family man, and they shared a dark, fantastical aesthetic. She also felt a little sorry for him. He seemed lonely, in spite of his fame, and Palmer found herself hoping that she could help him. “He’d believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn’t actually fall in love,” she wrote in her book. “ ‘But that’s impossible,’ ” she told him. He’d written stories and scenes of people in love. “‘That’s the whole point, darling,’ he said. ‘Writers make things up.’ ”

They wed in 2011 in the Berkeley home of their friends Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the novelists. Their union had a multiplying effect on their fame and stature, drawing each out of their respective domains of cult stardom and into the airy realm of tech-funded virality. They became darlings of the TED Talk circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezos’s ultrasecret Campfire retreat. Gaiman introduced Palmer to Twitter, which he had used to become fantasy’s most beloved author of 140-character bons mots. Palmer, in turn, leaned into her growing reputation as a crowdfunding genius. Online, they flirted, went after each other’s critics, and praised each other’s progressive politics. In an interview with Out magazine in 2012, Palmer said that the main “other” relationship in both of their lives was with their fans: “Sometimes when I’m with Neil, and go to the other room to Twitter with my followers, it feels like sneaking off for a quick shag.”

This wasn’t strictly a metaphor. During the early years of their marriage, they lived apart for months at a time and encouraged each other to have affairs. According to conversations with five of Palmer’s closest friends, the most important rule governing their open relationship was honesty. They found that sharing the details of their extramarital dalliances—and sometimes sharing the same partners—brought them closer together.

In 2012, Palmer met a 20-year-old fan, who has asked to be referred to as Rachel, at a Dresden Dolls concert. After one of Palmer’s next shows, the women had sex. The morning after, Palmer snapped a few semi-naked pictures of Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaiman. She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but then Palmer seemed to lose interest in sex with her. Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to Gaiman online, telling Rachel, “He’ll love you.” The two struck up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gaiman invited her to his house in Wisconsin. As she packed for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she had any advice for pleasing Gaiman in bed. Palmer joked in response, “i think the fun is finding out on your own.” With Gaiman, Rachel says there was never a “blatant rupture of consent” but that he was always pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her. Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him “like a toy.”

For Gaiman and Palmer, these were happy years. With his editing help, she wrote The Art of Asking. They toured together. And when Palmer was offered a residency at Bard College, Gaiman tagged along to give some talks, then ended up receiving an offer to join the faculty as a professor of the arts. After they’d been together for a few years, Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology. But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together. When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry. He refused to see a therapist. Instead, he sat down to write a short story that kept getting longer until it had turned into a novel. Although the child at the center of the story in many ways remains opaque, Palmer felt he had never been so open. He dedicated the book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, “to Amanda, who wanted to know.”

IN 2014, THE CRACKS in Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage began to show to those around them. While they were at Bard, they decided to buy a house upstate. Palmer would have preferred to live in New York City, but Gaiman liked the woods. Eventually, he picked a sprawling estate set on 80 acres in Woodstock. It was Gaiman’s money, a friend who accompanied them on the house hunt says, “and he was going to have the say.”

Later that year, Palmer got pregnant. She and Gaiman were spending more time at home together and talked about slowing down and devoting their attention to their marriage. She wanted to close the relationship, and he agreed. But when she was eight months pregnant, Gaiman came to her with a problem: He had slept with a fan in her early 20s, taking her virginity. Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was “going crazy.” He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor. Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment. “Amanda was shocked at how traumatized Neil was, given his public persona and the guy she thought she’d married,” a person close to them says.

One of the people in whom Palmer confided about her marital issues at the time was Caroline, a potter who, along with her builder husband, Phillip, had been living on the Woodstock property and working as a caretaker. Gaiman had made them an offer that seemed too good to be true. They would build an addition on one of the cabins on the land at Gaiman’s expense, and in exchange, Gaiman would sell them a five-acre parcel, allowing them to put up a barn-style home to share with their three daughters. They tended to the garden, ran errands for guests, and rehabilitated the buildings, which needed plumbing and electrical work.

At lunch one day, Palmer told Caroline she hated living in the woods and was disturbed by what she was learning about her husband. “‘You have no idea the twisted, dark things that go on in that man’s head,’ ” Caroline recalls Palmer saying. Palmer said she wished her marriage were more like Caroline and Phillip’s, but their marriage of 11 years was falling apart, too. In 2017, Phillip moved out of their house. Caroline, 54, spent her days in bed crying and drinking. She stopped eating and, for the most part, stopped working. It was then that Gaiman began paying attention to her. He would bring juices up to her cabin and fret that she was losing too much weight. The first time he touched her, in December 2018, she was sitting on his couch next to him, crying from exhaustion. Gaiman told her, “You need a hug.” She stood and he hugged her, then slid his hands down her pants and into her underwear and squeezed her butt. She does not recall saying or doing anything in response. “I was stunned,” she says.

Over the next two years, they had a series of sexual encounters, always when Palmer was away. When Gaiman wasn’t around, they occasionally engaged in phone sex. At first Caroline, who hadn’t been with anyone since Phillip left, went along willingly. But at the end of their second encounter, she remembers asking Gaiman what Palmer would think about their romance: “He said, ‘Caroline, there is no romance.’” After that, she tried to keep her distance from him, darting away when she saw him on the estate. He was difficult to avoid. He kept an egg incubator in Caroline’s cabin and would come down and check on it, entering without texting first. On one of these visits, he found her crying by the fireplace. He walked over to her, stuck his thumb in her mouth, and twisted her nipples. She told Gaiman the arrangement was making her “feel bad.” She recalls him replying, “I don’t want you to feel bad.” But nothing changed. Caroline had no income at the time and was borrowing money from her sister to get by. She worried that if she didn’t appease Gaiman, he’d kick her out of her house and then she and her three daughters would have nowhere to go. “ ‘I like our trade,’ ” she remembers him saying. “ ‘You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.’ ”

Sometimes she would babysit. Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer’s bed. Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home. He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline’s hand and put it on his penis. She says she jumped out of the bed. “He didn’t have boundaries,” Caroline says. “I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.”

In April 2021, Gaiman informed Caroline that the land he’d promised her was no longer available. That summer, she stopped responding to his attempts to engage in phone sex and Gaiman increased the pressure on her to leave his property. One night in December 2021, Gaiman’s business manager, Terry Bird, called Caroline and offered her $5,000 to move immediately if she’d sign a 16-page NDA agreeing to never discuss anything about her experience with Gaiman or Palmer or to take legal action against Gaiman. Caroline recalls saying to Bird, “What am I going to do with $5,000? I need therapy. This is maybe $300,000.” Looking back, she says she didn’t know how she came up with that number, but Gaiman agreed to it, and she signed. (Gaiman’s representatives say Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and deny that he engaged in any sexual activity with her in the presence of his son.)

TWO MONTHS LATER, Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke. By then, Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing. According to Palmer’s friends, she asked for a divorce after Rachel called to tell her that she and Gaiman were still having sexual contact, long past the point when Palmer thought their relationship had ended. She was hurt but unsurprised. “I find it all very boring,” she later wrote to Rachel, who recalls the exchange. “Just the lack of self-knowledge and the lack of interest in self-knowledge.” In late 2021, Palmer found out about Caroline, too. “I remember her saying, ‘That poor woman,’” recalls Lance Horne, a musician and friend of Palmer’s in whom she confided at the time. “‘I can’t believe he did it again.’”

By the time she asked Pavlovich to babysit, Palmer was fed up with Gaiman’s behavior, but “she still had some faith in his decency,” a friend says. Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter. “I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’ ” the friend says. And Palmer still hoped, according to those close to her, that she and Gaiman would be able to negotiate a peaceful co-parenting arrangement. She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke. “She was going to do her best to keep Neil as a presence for her son,” one friend says.

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place. Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa. “It all happened again so quickly,” Pavlovich says. Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication. “I screamed ‘no,’” Pavlovich says. Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done. After she said “no,” Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant. She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished. When it was over, he called her “slave” and ordered her to “clean him up.” She protested that it wasn’t hygienic. “He said, ‘Are you defying your master?’ ” she recalls. “I had to lick my own shit.”

Afterward, she got into the shower and tried to wash her mouth out with a bar of lavender soap. It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs. She noticed blood swirling down the drain. He hadn’t used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection. She had a migraine, and her whole body ached. But she didn’t consider leaving. She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.” She says she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, a detention center where they were forced to lick the floor as punishment. She’d heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave. “People keep licking the floor in that horrible room,” she says.

The nights with Gaiman blurred together. There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal sex with her. He made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it. He ordered her to suck him off while he watched screeners for the first season of The Sandman. In one instance, he thrust his penis into Pavlovich’s mouth with such force that she vomited on him. Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.

A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family, their son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.” Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.” One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children’s show Odd Squad. She joined them, sitting down next to the child. Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. “He would never shut a door,” she says.

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage. It was a small room—one double bed, a television, and a bathroom. When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. “ ‘You should really get off the iPad,’ ” she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked. He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to “lick it off.” He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down. “Before you leave,” he told Pavlovich, “you have to finish your job.” She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees. The door was open. (Gaiman’s representatives say these allegations are “false, not to mention, deplorable.”)

Three weeks after Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke, Palmer told her that the child would be traveling with Gaiman to Edinburgh in a few days to visit the Amazon production of his series Anansi Boys. They wouldn’t need her for a couple of weeks. That morning, Pavlovich came down with COVID. Palmer and Gaiman agreed that she could isolate in Gaiman’s empty home. They still hadn’t paid her for a single hour she’d worked for them.

TEN DAYS AFTER Gaiman left New Zealand, Pavlovich went to Palmer’s house for dinner. She asked Palmer if she could tell her something in confidence and made her promise not to tell Gaiman. She begged for reassurance that she would still keep her job as the child’s nanny. Palmer assured Pavlovich her employment was not in danger. Sitting in the kitchen, Pavlovich told Palmer that Gaiman had made a pass at her. She told Palmer about the bath. “I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” she said. “He just did it.” She said he had been having sex with her ever since. She withheld some of the most brutal details and did not describe her experience as sexual assault; she didn’t yet see it that way.

Palmer did not appear to be surprised. “Fourteen women have come to me about this,” she said. She mentioned that Gaiman had slept with another babysitter during his first marriage, and that she’d heard from other women who were disturbed by their experiences with him. Pavlovich waited until the end to tell Palmer about the child being present in Auckland. Afterward, she recalled, Palmer was silent. She appeared shocked. Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room. She told her, “I’ve had to do this before, and I can do this again. I will take care of you.” Pavlovich lay down in the bed and heard Palmer pacing back and forth in her room upstairs until 3 a.m.

Palmer called Gaiman that night. According to Horne, the musician, she asked Gaiman whether their son had been wearing headphones while he and Pavlovich were in the hotel room. He replied “no,” then hung up. The following day, Palmer emailed Gaiman and their couples counselor, a man named Wayne Muller, a minister and “a sort of marital companion,” as he put it to me. According to Muller, who relayed the contents of the email to me, Palmer wrote that Gaiman needed psychiatric treatment and had finally agreed to seek it. “Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation,” Muller tells me. Palmer then flew to Edinburgh, where Gaiman was staying with their son, whom she collected. Meanwhile, Pavlovich received a text from Gaiman: “Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to make anything better?” Pavlovich didn’t respond immediately. “My reflex was to fix the situation,” she tells me. The next day, she wrote, “Hey. We’ll speak soon … hope you are doing good.”

In the days and weeks after Pavlovich’s revelation, Palmer was solicitous, checking in frequently over text and sending warm notes: “From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on ponsonby road i’ve been glad i met you. That is tenfold so now.” She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals. In late March, Palmer sent a message to a friend of Pavlovich’s, a 41-year-old ceramicist named Misma Anaru, in whom Pavlovich had confided about Gaiman. “I’m glad she had you to take care of her,” she wrote. “It’s been a rough month for everyone.” Anaru’s partner, Kris Taylor, was a doctor of psychology who had lectured at the University of Auckland on coercion, consent, and rape. Although Pavlovich had never used the words rape or sexual assault to describe what had happened to her, both Anaru and Taylor believed Gaiman had raped her repeatedly. Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame. Replying to Palmer, she wrote that “the majority of my rage is directed at Neil.” But she couldn’t understand why, with all Palmer knew about Gaiman, she had sent Scarlett into that situation. “Did you not see this coming a mile away?” She added, “And yes I know you asked him not to do that to her, but honestly, the fact you even felt that was something you should ask is fucked up in ways that defy comprehension.”

Around the same time, Pavlovich followed up with Gaiman. “I had a very intense dream about you last night,” she wrote. “Are you doing okay?” In his reply, he made a reference to something that had happened two weeks earlier. In a session with Muller, Palmer had said that Pavlovich was telling people he had raped her and was planning to “Me Too” him. “I wanted to kill myself,” he wrote. “But I’m getting through it a day at a time, and it’s been two weeks now and I’m still here. Fragile but not great.” He expressed dismay at Anaru’s message, which Palmer had told him about. “I’m a monster in it,” he wrote, “and Amanda seems to have bought it hook line and sinker.” Apologizing for “bringing any upset” into Pavlovich’s life, he wrote, “I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed.”

Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach. She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman. “I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life,” she tells me. She rushed to reassure him. “It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she wrote. Anaru had been “triggered by something I think,” she added.

“I am so glad that you messaged me,” Gaiman wrote. “I thought you were a monster.”

Gaiman asked Pavlovich to speak with Muller. “Knowing that you would be prepared to say, ‘It’s not true, it was consensual, he’s not a monster,’ makes me a lot more grounded,” he wrote. Muller reached out to Pavlovich to offer a “safe harbor.” When they spoke on the phone, Pavlovich told Muller what Gaiman, who was paying for the session, had asked her to say. After listening to Muller’s “esoteric, spiritual claptrap,” she felt worse. “I really felt it was all my fault.” Muller, for his part, tells me that ethical boundaries prevent him from sharing anything about his sessions with Gaiman, but he apparently felt comfortable sharing details of his conversation with Pavlovich. “What she called to speak with me about was feeling pressured—from very diverse, mostly older women in her community—to take action that she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable taking. I accompanied her on a journey to help her figure out the answers for herself to that issue.”

In the weeks that followed, Muller connected Gaiman with the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts. According to Muller, Gaiman had several preliminary phone calls with the facility and was considering entering a six-week inpatient evaluation process. But Gaiman never followed through. “I don’t remember why not,” Muller says.

Pavlovich grew suicidal. She hoarded zopiclone and aspirin and walked around the city surveying bridges. She decided she’d take the pills and told Palmer about her plan. At Palmer’s urging, she checked into an emergency room. “You are loved,” Palmer texted. After a few days in a respite center, feeling slightly better, Pavlovich reached out to Palmer to ask if she could resume working as the child’s nanny. The apartment Palmer had set her up with was temporary, and she needed a place to stay. “It would be really good for me I think to have something to do and people to be around,” she wrote. Palmer argued that it was not the time for her to take on the responsibility of caring for a child. “Your job is to care for you,” she replied. She proposed they get together when Pavlovich got out, promising to help her get back on her feet, and suggested in the meantime she go home to her parents. This infuriated Pavlovich. “There is a reason I have divorced my parents,” she wrote. “I’m starting to feel very much on my own and like I hate everyone.”

“I can’t offer you exactly what you want from me,” Palmer wrote, “but i can still be here. remember this.”

“Babe I am more alone than I’ve ever been in my life,” Pavlovich replied. She wished she’d never agreed to be their nanny: “If I hadn’t gotten on that first ferry I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman. “Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help.” Two minutes later, she added, “I’ve been thinking of you so much.” Gaiman replied that he’d be happy to help in a tangible way. Pavlovich then received an NDA dated to the first night of her employment, when he had suggested she take a bath. She signed it. A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work. Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.

Over the course of the year, Pavlovich’s perspective changed. “As he faded away, I began to let other voices in,” she says. Friends connected her with women who were experienced in dealing with sexual assault and abuse, including Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein’s and an advocate for ending the “misuse of NDAs to buy women’s silence.” (Caroline and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.) These women encouraged her to go to the police.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault. At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case. After she told the officers her story, one of them told her that Palmer’s cooperation would be essential for the case to move forward. Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate. “I said to them, ‘She’s a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She’ll want to protect me. I’m sure she’ll speak.’ ”

When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them. Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement. Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich’s confession. It was called “Whakanewha,” named after a park near their homes on Waiheke. “Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep—thanks a ton/A few more corpses in the sack/You’ll get away with it; it’s just the same old script/This world is shaped to have your back/You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then you ran/And went and did it all again.”

THIS PAST FALL, Pavlovich began studying for a degree in English literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. As it happens, the university had awarded Gaiman an honorary degree in 2016. In December, Pavlovich approached the head of the university, Dame Sally Mapstone, to share her experience and ask the university to review the decision to honor Gaiman. Mapstone was sympathetic but indecisive; some on the board, she told Pavlovich, would likely want evidence of prosecution to rescind his degree. As far as the police report goes, the “matter has been closed,” a spokesperson says. Gaiman’s career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected. A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been put on hold or canceled. But the second season of The Sandman is set to premiere on Netflix this year, as is Anansi Boys on Amazon Prime. (Amazon did not return a request for comment.) He and Palmer are entering the fifth year of an ugly divorce and custody battle. Gaiman has “bled her dry” in the divorce proceedings, according to someone close to her. She’s moved back in with her parents in Massachusetts. (Gaiman’s representatives alleged that Palmer was a “major force” driving this story in light of their contentious divorce.)

In December, Pavlovich flew to Atlanta to meet some of the other women who had made accusations against Gaiman. They had been unaware of one another’s existence until they’d heard the podcast. Since then, they had formed a WhatsApp group and grown close. “It’s been like meeting survivors of the same cult,” Stout tells me. “It’s impossible to understand unless you were there.” On New Year’s Eve, Pavlovich, Stout, and Caroline gathered around a bonfire at the Athens home of the musician Michael Stipe, an old friend of Caroline’s. Kendall joined them on Face-Time. With their dark hair and delicate features, they looked like they could be sisters. Around 11 p.m., they wrote down their intentions for the year and cast the scraps of paper into the fire. Pavlovich had written that she wanted to “release the yoke of victimhood” and “invite in self-acceptance.” The next morning, she woke before the others, made coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and sat on the porch in the winter sun. “Am I happy?” she wrote in her journal. “No.” But she also noted that she wasn’t alone. “There is no need to feel abandoned anymore

#Neil Gaiman #good omens

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starkwlkr · 1 year ago

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It’s been a pleasure to read your works Jen, no one writes quite like you. Wishing you well and hope you’ll come back soon. I understand this isn’t your usual pairing but it would mean a lot to me and if you have the time: I could request: ‘Toto x Susie x reader’ where she is an upcoming driver, her family weren’t supportive and the Wolff’s take her under their wing as one of their own overtime? Thanks so much 🥰

what was i made for? | F1

for the purpose of this fic, the reader is going to be a rookie during the 2019 season because yes <3 live laugh love 2019 rookies 🫶🏼also this is my last post so thank you for all the love and support!!

Y/n knew how her parents felt about karting. They always told her the same thing: that’s no place for a little girl, you’re going to get hurt blah blah blah. But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She continued with her dreams. Eventually she found herself winning trophies and raising it on the small podium. Then the small podium turned into a bigger one.

The journey to F1 was hard, but she was proud of herself. The holidays were especially hard for her. She hard received the news that her family wasn’t going to be with her for the holidays at all.

She didn’t live in Monaco like most of the drivers on the grid, she couldn’t afford it. For now, she was living with a roommate in London. But even her roommate had plans with her own family so Y/n was going to be spending her time alone in her flat with nothing but takeout and Netflix.

Toto Wolff was the first one to notice the frown on the young girl’s face. It was a late night in there paddock and all the team principals had a late meeting. He was surprised to see her. All the drivers were gone, most likely already on flights to their families or vacation homes. But she was still here.

“Are you waiting on someone?” Toto asked.

“No, I just don’t want to leave right now. Is that weird to say?” She replied.

“I don’t find it weird. I just thought you would’ve already been on a plane headed towards Ibiza or Mallorca. I think that’s where most drivers and their families go for the holidays. What are your plans?”

“Well . . . I have a new season of this show that I’m watching to catch up on. I might watch all the marvel movies. And if I finish everything before break is over then I guess I’ll just sleep.” She said casually.

“You’re not going to spend time with your family?” He questioned.

“I don’t know where they are. Last time I checked, they were in the Maldives. All I got was a text saying they couldn’t meet me at the airport and my roommate is away with hers, but at least I get the flat all to myself.” She tried to sound cheery, but Toto could hear the hurt in her voice.

“No, that’s unacceptable. You’re not spending the holidays alone.”

And that’s how Y/n ended up on a flight with the Wolff family to their preferred vacation destination. Y/n had gotten to know more about the young boy, Jack Wolff, and his love for Legos. He even let Y/n build a car, which surprised both of his parents since he didn’t like people grabbing his legos.

“Can Y/n come over for Christmas too?” Jack asked his mother.

“Why don’t you ask her if she wants to come over?” Susie encouraged the boy. She was hoping Y/n would say yes.

“Y/n, would you like to spend Christmas with us? Papa and I always make cookies and Mama always lets me open one present before bed! And we can make gingerbread houses and stay up all night!” Jack said.

“All night? What if Santa sees us?”

“We can be really quiet.”

Susie and Toto watched as Y/n and Jack talked about what they wanted for Christmas. “We can’t let her be alone on Christmas, Toto.” She whispered to her husband.

“She won’t, she has us.”

“And that’s P8, Y/n! Good job, you did great.”

Y/n would be lying if she said she didn’t feel like crying a bit. The beginning of the season wasn’t good, but she kept going and soon she made it into the points. She did it, she scored her first points in F1.

After getting back to the garage, she spotted Jack and Susie waiting for her with big smiles on their faces.

“You did it! Go Y/n!” Jack pounced on her the second she got out of her car.

“Thank you, Jack!” Y/n smiled and gave the little boy a hug.

“Did you hear me yelling your name? I was with papa, but I wanted you to win.” Jack said as he grabbed Y/n’s hand and walked with her towards Susie.

“I heard you, you were yelling so loud.” Y/n chuckled. She then saw how proud Susie looked and couldn’t help herself so she immediately gave Susie a hug.

“You did so well, Y/n! And you scored points! That’s amazing!” Susie cheered.

“Thank you, I think I might cry.” Y/n admitted.

“You should be proud of yourself. I am.”

Drive to survive

“How did you feel when you scored your first points?”

Y/n instantly smiled at the memory. She remembered it all too well. Her and the Wolff family celebrating afterwards, her being congratulated by everyone on the grid.

“Oh man, it was my happiest day. Before that I used to say my happiest day hadn’t happened yet. I was content with at least scoring one point, but I got four! It was amazing and I’m glad that the people that love and support me were there to witness that special moment with me.” Y/n smiled.

The camera cuts to a smiling Toto. He looked like a proud dad and he was. Toto considered Y/n to be part of his family.

“Proud. That’s all I can say.”

#inbox <3 #anon #formula 1 #f1 x reader #formula 1 imagine #f1 imagine #f1 x you #f1 driver!reader

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xxblairexxss · 2 years ago

Text

I’m sorry

Pairing : Charles Leclerc x asian!reader

Theme : Angst

Just a timeline of Charles’s girlfriend throughout the years, how she went from a girl who migrated to France when she was 6 years old to becoming a girlfriend of the Formula 1 driver, Charles Leclerc.

I’m not entirely sure about this one but I just wanted to clear my draft. I’m only tagging those who told me they wanted to be included in my general tag list! Please don’t be offended if I didn’t tag you because it’s not Jealousy part 3 😭 so I thought you don’t want to be tagged but please let me know if you wish to in all of my stories!

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2018

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2019

yninstagram

Liked by charles_leclerc and 98,765 others

ynusername dropping a selfie bcs it’s been a while

charles_leclerc Mon amour 🧸🤎

ynusername 🤎

user1 SO PRETTYY

user2 LOVING THE HAIR COLOUR!!

user3 she’s asian? can she speaks french?

user4 she has lived in france since she was 6 so yes she can

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc and 78,072 others

ynusername a quick stop for mirror selfie before rushing to class

charles_leclerc my pretty girl 🤎

user1 oh to be called my pretty girl by charles too 😭

user2 does she always dress like that?

user3 other wags just scream old money with class. this one..i’m not sure myself 😣

user4 lol she can wear whatever she wants

user2 i just wish she wear something more relevant since it’s affecting charles’s image too

user4 that doesn’t make any sense

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2020

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 103,665 others

ynusername rainy season 🌧️

charles_leclerc I miss you

ynusername I miss you too 🥺🥺

user1 I love how she still look stunning without all those expensive brands

user2 PRETTIESTTT ❤️

user3 is it just me or she looks so out of place compare to other wags?

user4 how i wish she paid more attention to her style

user5 too simple 😕

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2021

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 277,231 others

ynusername loving this dress! 💛

charles_leclerc beautiful princess

ynusername love youu! 🥺

user1 meeeh tried too hard

user2 lol all those stuffs but still don’t look on par with other wags

user3 omg you look so pretty in a dress!!! AAAAA

user4 charles’s princess ❤️

user5 girl you ate and left all crumbs

“I can’t.”

Charles furrowed his brows to your answer. “What do you mean you can’t? Y/N, we have been together for more than 6 years. Don’t you think it’s time for us to start living together?”

“I got a job offer in London. I’ll be moving away in a week.”

“What? What about us? Don’t you think you should have told me first before you accepted the offer?” He blinked in disbelief, part of him was hoping that you were just pulling a prank on him.

“It was a job that my mom had always been dreaming of, Charles. She sacrificed a lot for me.”You tilted your chin to avoid the tears on your waterline to spill. “She sacrificed her life before she could play with dolls for me. I spent my childhood waiting for the sound of her keys jingling as she came back from her night shift, waking up with just a small note sticked on the side of my breakfast plate because she couldn’t wished me a good morning for having to rush to work. She gave up on her dream, crying from missing her parents in South Korea every night just to make sure I got a chance to draw my life with colours so I wouldn’t have to suffer like she did. I need to accept this job for her. Everything I have been doing and ever will do is for her and you know this.”

Charles remained silence. He had always known your mom’s struggle, raiding you alone as a signle mother and part of him had always known that if you were put in a situation where you had to prioritise your life or your mom’s life, you would always choose hers. He knew it but he was never prepared for the day to come. He couldn’t find himself to say anything else and pulled you into his embrace instead.

“And I’m tired. I’m so, so tired of the constant pressure from everyone. I can’t even wear anything that I want without getting comments about how incompatible I look, how messy I look. I– I don’t know what they– what everyone wants from me. It’s either I looked out of place, an outsider or I looked like I’m trying too hard. I don’t know what everyone expect from me. I’m happy, I’m so goddamn happy that you got to be where you are right now but the more you are building yourself, the more I’m falling apart. I’m losing myself, Charles. I feel like I have been helping you to build your garden while mine is just getting abandoned and forsaken and just full of wilt flowers.”

“I’m sorry.”

That was the last word you remembered him saying as he kept you in your arms, holding you so you wouldn’t fall on your knee from the way your body shook within every sob.

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2022

ynusername

London, United Kingdom

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 277,663 others

ynusername took a day off to play tourist!

comments have been disabled

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2023

lancomeofficial and ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 377,620 others

lancomeofficial Lancôme newest global ambassador, ynusername lookingall glammed up by jaime.creates.

user1 OMG OMG OMG

user2 THAT’S MY GIRRLL

user3 been here since day 1

user4 She looks unreal

user5 it’s been a while since the last time i saw her in my feed 🥹

user6 still using her ex bf fame to build her name lol she’s worse than other ex wag

user7 are you high???

✧.* tags! @i83andrew @cltrlne @karmabyfernando

#charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine #f1 imagines #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagines #f1 imagine #f1 x reader

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theweirdwideweb · 1 month ago

Note

Can we have more film club updates? That was amazing and I’m proud of you!!!!

Well you remember how my friend was also at film club? She and I hung out on Christmas Day. We went to my sister's house for lunch. We played with my niece, nephew, and mother in a tent and then went to Nosferatu. My friend has been closer to the film club asshat than I have and asked if I wanted to see his text to her about The Incident, but warned me it was bad. Since nothing he said to my face about mental illness upset me because duh, not a shred of truth to it--- actually what he said about me in the text upset me. He tried to convince my friend that I was venting narcissistic rage at him the entire 45 minutes before he ran his mouth off and I stormed out. He said I am, in fact, a toxic narcissist who is in active addiction, not recovery, and I'm trying to lure my friend into a codependent relationship. It got to me. Such a reality warping piece of gaslighting. I had therapy today and talked about it. It triggered a lot of trauma. The doctor and I talked about how my mother would mercilessly abuse me as a child and then when I was angry or upset she'd accuse me of bullying and abusing her. We also talked about how the man I was in love with all my 20s would come sleep in my bed 3 nights a week, hold me, give me shoulder massages, fuck me and then act like I should just know better when I wanted to be his girl. For 8 years he led me on that way and then beat the shit out of me. I talked with the doctor about how in my early 20s in the recession when the unemployment rate for my demographic was over 50% I had a small job filling bottles with supplements for $9/hr and how the gagillionaire CEO dressed me down within 30 seconds of meeting me: told me I was fat, depressed, and obviously hadn't gotten laid recently. When I said that wasn't true he said, "Well it wasn't as good as you wanted it to be, was it?" We talked about how I was minding my business on the train home from work just after Christmas 2019 when a completely random woman pepper sprayed me in the face and just stepped off the train. I possess a deep fear that somehow I am marked out for cruelty. Greg, the film club asshat, tipped his hand by calling me a narcissist. He's a narcissist. He's the one who doesn't give a damn about people and tries to warp reality so he appears a victim. Even though I knew it wasn't true when I got home from Nosferatu I was taking internet tests to see if I have empathy, signs you're a narcissist, googling "what is active addiction." Am I hurting people and I don't realize it? When I think people think I'm smart and funny am I just being completely delusional? Am I making a fool of myself? No, I'm not any of those things. But it hurt me because I just have this sense that there's something wrong with me. Something that repulses people, makes them hate me. Even strangers can pick me out of a crowd. Is it because I'm ugly? Is it because I move my body strange? Is it because they read neurodivergence on me? It feels like my fault. I've always felt that way. Like if I could just fix myself and be good enough that I could stop the abuse and have friends and hobbies and a safe place for myself. I've never been safe in my whole life and it gets to me. It's like how I feel trapped by mental illness. I try as hard as I can and it will never leave me. It's as if I'm in an abusive relationship with life itself. I was marked out at birth by my abusive parents and biology. I can take comfort that I'm a better person than all these abusers---but I still lose. I lost that job filling bottles. I lost the love of my youth. Now I lost the film club, too, something which I felt proud of. I said, "See? I can go out into the city and find friends. When I talk to people they see I'm smart and funny and they like me."

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mirrorball-leclerc · 1 year ago

Text

track 001. shameless

─── ❝ distance, inches in between, i want you to give in. ❞ ───

masterlist // next

liked by charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc, pierregasly and others

nataliaruiz my “best” friend gets to drive for ferrari next year! i think this calls for a celebration! (please get me sebastian vettel’s number or daniel ricciardo's, i'm not picky)

tagged: charles_leclerc

charles_leclerc we are best friends stop lying to people

nataliaruiz are we though? charles_leclerc and i’m not getting you sebastian’s number much less daniel's nataliaruiz oh come on! please! for me! charles_leclerc no way

user18 oh how i’ll adore having natalia around at the paddock with seb.

user25 why is she only making her presence known now that charles is driving for ferrari? was alfa romero not enough?

user18 she has a job asshole and they’ve been friends since they were kids. nataliaruiz if you’ll scroll further down my page you’ll find that i congratulated charles on his achievement in getting into formula 1. not that i need to give an explanation to a stranger.

pierregasly have you two started dating yet? asking for a friend (i’m the friend)

nataliaruiz fuck off you french fuck user84 so it's not just us who sees it user67 meaning we’re not crazy like we thought we were

danielricciardo hate to break it to you kid, but i have a girlfriend

nataliaruiz aw man. also, please never call me kid again, i'm not that young. i could totally date leo dicaprio pierregasly that's because you're under 25... nataliaruiz i wouldn't complain.

maxverstappen33 you're telling me i have to deal with dumb and dumber?

nataliaruiz you fucking love me verstappen admit it. maxverstappen33 i tolerate you at best on a good day.

it started with alcohol, although stories like this always do. in hindsight you can't really blame charles for the choices he made when natalia looked the way she did. she was beautiful, he had known that his entire life. boys always told him he was lucky to have a best friend who looked like her. though it didn't always feel like luck when a boy broke her heart and he was left to console her. sometimes he wished she was less beautiful so her heart would get broken less.

after the announcement of charles’ move to ferrari for the 2019 season, natalia had decided a party night was in order, and charles was never one to say no to her. not even when they were little kids getting in trouble for whatever stupid stunt they decided to pull. it wasn't just that he had a crush on her until he was 14, but more so he didn't know how to say no to a pretty girl, especially one who was his best friend. even when she had moved to a different country to pursue her dreams of acting and modeling, they always found a way to speak. it also helped that she dropped everything the moment he needed her and vice versa.

had it cost them both relationships, yes, but neither of them truly cared. it was a weird dynamic to everyone, they acted like couple but they were friends, or so they insisted. and so they found themselves in the position they were in, naked in a bed, with a massive hangover. waking up together in a bed wasn't strange, they had done that before, but waking up naked was something new to them. natalia was the first to wake up, shooting up when she'd realized what had happened. she grabbed the pillow she had been using and smacked charles across the face, effectively waking up the sleeping boy.

charles shot up, "je suis réveillé. qu'est-ce qui ne va pas? qui est mort?" (i'm awake. what's wrong? who is dead?)

"english, charles, english. it’s too early for french," natalia sighed, running a hand through her hair.

"what's wrong?" natalia gestured to him, then her, and then their clothes on the room floor, "non."

"oui," she sarcastically said, "what do we do?"

"ignore it?" he questioned, "do you remember anything?"

"no," she muttered, "do you?"

charles shook his head, "i don't remember anything after pierre stood on a table."

"good, we forget this ever happened, things go back to normal."

charles nodded, "okay, do i close my eyes?"

"for?"

"are you not going to put your clothes back on?"

"oh!" natalia realized, "yes, i am."

pierre gasly added two people

pierre gasly they didn't leave to go fuck max!

max verstappen i'm just saying it could be a possibility. we've all been waiting years for them to start dating.

esteban ocon doesn't she have a boyfriend?

pierre gasly non, ils ont rompu, je pense (no, they broke up, i think)

mae jones translation? pierre gasly google translate it bitch mae jones you know what you french fuck baguette, joan of arc is still more famous than you AND SHE'S BEEN DEAD FOR CENTURIES!!

max verstappen PIERRE FUCKING GASLY IF YOU FUCKING ADDED LECLERC I'M CRASHING INTO YOU NEXT WEEK

natalia ruiz is pierre talking shit again?

max verstappen EVEN WORSE YOU ADDED NATALIA?

natalia ruiz no, it's just not fair right? max verstappen i hate you. natalia ruiz and yet i was still your first kiss charles leclerc WHAT?! mae jones excuse me?

daphne jones can you guys shut up? for once? i can't have a moment of peace in the studio because my phone keeps blowing up.

natalia ruiz I'M GONNA GO SCREAM IN A PILLOW

charles leclerc please don't.

esteban ocon are you two together?

natalia ruiz i slept over. we didn't fuck. pierre gasly yet.

pierre gasly also, i feel like we should circle back to the natalia was max's first kiss thing. how did that happen? when did that happen? where did it happen?

max verstappen as mae says, i plead the fifth

natalia ruiz we were 12, and it was a dare. momma didn't raise a bitch

natalia ruiz well, she didn't raise me but you guys get what i mean

daniel ricciardo ah, trauma dumping, a skill this friend group is excellent at, welcome to the club.

max verstappen NO! DON'T DO THAT SHIT! THEY ARE NOT WELCOME!

sebastian vettel max, behave.

carlos sainz this is why we call you dad seb. you act like one.

natalia ruiz oh my god. oh my god. oh my god.

charles leclerc i am now deaf in one ear. she has really strong lungs.

esteban ocon i figure we should let her knew lewis and fernando are also in this group chat. to get all of the screaming out at once.

charles leclerc well fuck you for that esteban. my ears are ringing.

charles was fucked and apparently a good liar. he remembered everything from last night, from the first drink he had to the first kiss he shared with natalia. he was far from sober last night, but for some fucked up reason he remembered everything. charles didn't have the same luck as natalia, he just couldn't forget. and oh, how badly he wanted to forget, lorenzo had been right, falling for your best friend was never going to work out. it was times like these where he desperately wished his papa and jules were still around, they always knew what to say.

everyone around him always told him he was a shit liar, but hah! he had just proved them all wrong (take that pierre and george!) charles had effectively lied to his best friend right in her face and she hadn’t suspected a thing. apparently he had been thinking too hard because natalia sat next to him and he hadn’t noticed. charles wasn't even sure how they were functioning in the same space after what had occured between them this morning, rather late last night.

she sighed, trying to get his attention, charles turned to glance at her, saying nothing. natalia rolled her eyes and huffed, this time charles felt inclined to speak.

“what?” charles asked. she shrugged, “i don’t know, i feel weird.”

“do not tell me-” natalia’s eyes widened realizing what he was implying, “no charles! that’s not how it works. it’s been barely 24 hours or less!”

“i’m a man!” he shouted back, “i don’t know how that works!”

“oh my god,” natalia laughed. she sat back before turning her body to face charles, “kiss me.”

“quoi?” the monegasque questioned. she shrugged again, “i don’t know. maybe it’s because i know what we did and now i can’t seem to stop thinking about why on earth i would sleep with my best friend.”

“so… you want me to kiss you?”

“yes, maybe then i’ll remember why.”

“i’m not going to kiss you,” charles argued.

“what? why not?” natalia asked, “i’m a great kisser! i won’t bite, i swear!”

“you bit louis when we were 16,” charles reminded.

“because he was a horrible kisser and he liked garlic a bit too much.”

charles grimaced and opened his mouth to reply before natalia rolled her eyes him, grabbing him by the shirt of his collar and pulling in for a kiss. he reciprocated quickly, and after about a minute, natalia pulled away. charles stared at her, wondering what her next move would be.

she cocked her head to the side, “no, i still don’t get it.”

“get what?”

“why?”

charles quickly realized what she meant and replied, “we were drunk?”

“i would’ve done it sober,” natalia dismissed.

charles was shocked, that was a new revelation to him, “you would?”

“of course,” she quickly replied, “i would kiss you sober because what if a crazy fan was trying to kiss you? or what if a crazy ex wanted to kiss me?”

“right,” charles dejectedly replied. he stood up, “i’m going to take a nap.”

natalia stood up after him, grabbing his hand as he walked away, “was it the kiss? je suis désolée (i’m sorry) i wasn’t thinking and-”

charles interrupted her, pulling her closer and kissing her, natalia reciprocated. charles pulled away, placing his hand on her hips, there was tension between them, “tell me to stop and i will. i would never-”

it was her turn to cut him off, “don’t, don’t stop.”

green eyes met brown, not an ounce of regret seemed to be held in either of them. natalia waited for him to kiss her again. would this potentially ruin their friendship? absolutely, but neither of them cared, not right now. not when they only needed one thing, and one thing only, each other.

“why?” charles whispered, not daring to break their bubble.

“why not?” she argued.

“but it could-”

“i don’t care,” natalia says, “i trust you and you’re my best friends. i’d rather it be you then someone else i met at a bar. someone i don’t care about.”

“it’s going to change everything,” charles argued back.

“you’re schedule is about to be even worse because you’re driving for ferrari next season, you won’t have time for a relationship. i don’t want a shitty one night stand with a stranger or a relationship right now. it’s a win win for us.”

charles opened his mouth to argue again, but natalia has had enough, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him in for a passionate kiss. she pulled away first, breathing heavily, “do you want me to stop?”

“merde,” charles whispered, “non,” he decided after he paused to think about it, “s'il te plaît, ne t'arrête pas.” (shit, no. please, don’t stop.)

“okay,” she whispered, pulling him in for another kiss, both of them proceeding to lose each other in between charles’ sheets, not an ounce of regret. years later, they’ll both realize they were fucking idiots in love who disguised it as a friends with benefits relationship.

they both lay breathless in his bed between the sheets, she lays her head on his chest, and he pulls her close. they should’ve known then, it was never just sex for either of them. it was never was just going to be just sex.

“just sex?” she asks him.

charles, despite a broken heart quickly realized it was better to have a small part of natalia, than no part of her, “just sex,” he whispered, “this doesn’t change anything does it?”

natalia looks up at him, doe eyes looking at him, “no,” she replied, holding up her left pinky, like when they were children, “best friends?”

“pour toujours,” charles answers, interlacing their pinkies. (forever)

the were truly fucked from the start. if only they had realized it from the moment their lips first touched, maybe things would've gone differently for them. but would it truly? they had always loved each other, one way or another, they would end up in a similar situation.

taglist: @burningcupcakefire @arkhammaid @sunflower-golden-vol6 @applopie @lorarri @mypage-myfandoms @bb-swift @thewannabewriter @you-bleed-just-toknowyouarealive @stopeatread @hobiismyhopeu @lilsiz @alessioayla @niniluvsainz @au-ghosttype @cowboylikemets1989 @justtprachisblog @rmeddar123 @nichmeddar @landonorizzz @unluckyyoshi @Mimolovescookies @brekkers-whore @natcha888 @camdensreg @mycenterfold @dear-fifi @prongsvault @kaa212 @anxxiousaries @julesbabey1 @julesbabey @georgeparisole @Smnthnclj @dan3avocado @melissayalene @nothanqks @nikfigueiredo @bella-1 @namgification @jensonsonlybutton @chezmardybum @d3kstar

strikethrough means i couldn't tag you

¡leclerc-s speaks! y'all I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE SMUT! hence why i skipped that whole thing entirely. but yay, first part of this series is finally out! this story does begin in 2018, right after charles was announced to be driving for ferrari in the 2019 season and then jumps to 2019.

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet for me. enjoy!

#leclerc-s #the honest series #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x female oc #formula 1 #formula 1 fic #fanfic #fanfiction #f1 #f1 smau #f1 social media au #f1 instagram au #f1 fic

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redclercs · 2 years ago

Text

DELICATE✰ CHARLES LECLERC.

viii. 'cause I know that it's delicate

— the one where he is rooting for the anti-hero.

❝𝘉𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘺 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳. 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘴.❞ —𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘊𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴

warnings: did somebody say charles-centered chapter? third person pov, hate, mention of last chapter's panic attack, misogyny (i'm sorry!!! i'm going to let y/n have peace eventually i swear!!!) foul language, cheesy taylor swift references, 2.4k words (+articles as always!).

masterlist ✢ next

Can we stop proving Taylor Swift right for once? When she wrote 'My reputation's never been worse' back in 2017 we thought that would be the end of it. But in more recent times (2017 was AGES ago, guys, come on) the lyrics are still relevant and being applied to actress y/n y/ln's life. Her reputation truly has never been worse.

One thing is being called bad at your job. Which, okay, she is not (I am not biased, I'm just not stupid). y/n is great at being a RomCom actress, she has a stylist that sells her well and has good social media presence. Or had, since that's all gone now.

Even if she was lucky enough to really start making it in Hollywood, we can't ignore the fact that for the past two months y/n has been exposed as a really bad person. AND SHE'S LETTING IT HAPPEN!

While a lot of people in social media have come to her defense in the rejected marriage proposal topic, saying she doesn't have to say yes if she doesn't feel like it, others say it's what she 'owed' to Aidan Kim.

Sources, who are still yet to be revealed, have talked to magazines and celebrity sites about her romance with the guy she only sees as a toy. Does y/n have feelings at all? I guess Charles Leclerc didn't like what she said about him, since there were no pictures of them together at the Spanish Grand Prix. Losing your boyfriend and your reputation in the same week must hurt.

But that's not even the main issue here, why is y/n letting all of this happen right in front of her eyes? Hello, girl, speak up! Does she really have nothing to say in her defense?

People are eating her alive and what she does is post her luxurious breakfast in Monaco, Elix cans and Ferrari Special Edition merch. y/n doesn't care what is being said as long as people keep talking about her. You're going to regret this, girl. That's all I'm saying.

For now, let's say goodbye to the 'Queen of RomComs' reputation (2019-2023).

By Bridget Garcia

Matilde Bassi comes in the defense of y/n y/ln after last week's new discoveries on her breakup, a turmoil that has followed y/n for months now.

"She owes nothing to Aidan Kim. She's a self-made woman, and it's frankly disgusting how people want to give her achievements to some man." The former Broadway star said in an Instagram Live on Sunday June 4th.

After comments asked for her thoughts on the rejected engagement, Bassi didn't hold back: "y/n, just like every woman, has the right to say no. It's a proposal, not a sentence. Good for everyone who is brave enough to know what they don't want in their lives anymore."

Matilde hasn't walked away unscathed after such brave statements, people have started to crucify her on social media. Comments go from how she doesn't deserve to keep playing Juliet to how they're glad she lives in Italy now so they can't come across her on the street, Bassi is suffering similar repercussions to that of her beloved friend.

Let's remember Matilde and y/n were seen together in Europe in May, enjoying a short break in Rome before attenting the Monaco Grand Prix, where y/n went to see alleged boyfriend Charles Leclerc.

What do you think? Is Matilde Bassi right, or should she have kept her comments to herself and held on to whatever amount of love the public still had for her?

FROM CHISMETIFOSO ON TIKTOK: "THE FERRARI BOYS TALK ABOUT Y/N Y/LN" PT.1 & 2

[female voiceover in spanish]: ❝Charles went back to Monaco for the week off before Canada, and stopped to take pictures with fans like he usually does. Someone was brave enough to ask him what was up with y/n, besties, you won't expect what he said.❞

[Charles Leclerc, in english]:❝I am lucky to have a woman like y/n in my life, she's an amazing person and a great friend—[cut off]❞

[female voiceover in spanish]: ❝The Carlos video was sent by a fan that met Carlos in Spain, she also asked about y/n and Charles and Carlos assured she's loved by everyone.❞

[Carlos Sainz, in spanish]: ❝y/n is friends with everyone at Ferrari because we spent a lot of time together, I like her a lot she's fun to be around.❞

[female voiceover in spanish]: ❝Well, what do you think besties? Are our Ferrari boys on a PR stunt or do they really like certain actress that has brought nothing but drama to the table since they met her?❞

June 7th, Maranello, Italy.

Charles was already having a bad day before they told him about the PR meeting. Although it seemed impossible, this season's car got shittier every time and it made his confidence drop a little more every time he got on it and failed to drive properly. Was winning Monaco really just a lucky strike like everyone kept saying?

Spain was definitely a whole weekend to forget, not only for the shitshow that the Grand Prix had been. He couldn't stop thinking about y/n's panic attack and the way she had cried in his arms that same night.

Charles is not oblivious to everything that is happening around her, and how it did seem to get worse every time. When he first met her, he didn't think it would get to this point where people who didn't even know her would inflict torture and mental abuse on her all day every single day. And although Charles has been through a fair amount of online bullying as a professional athlete and public figure, it's not in the same way that what y/n is being subjected to right now.

"Are you listening, Charles?" the Ferrari PR manager asks, tapping her fingers in front of him, a few drops of coffee jump from his red styrofoam cup and into the white surface.

He nods, uninterested. Charles couldn't care less about whatever the Elix guys have to say. He sees the way the worst of them, Stuart Schaffer, looks at y/n. Lascivious, filthy. Charles has thought about punching him more times than he would like to admit.

There was a whole presentation on how Ferrari is being perceived by fans all over the world right now, touching on several points starting with Carlos and him, the last three races and finally, the people that surround Ferrari.

"Elix is experiencing a drop in sales, and we believe this to be due to a certain public figure that has been seen around the Paddock..." the Elix representative is saying, pointing at a graph that ends at the bottom of the page.

"Maybe it's just that your drink is shit," Charles' mouth is quicker than his brain, and he knows he's completely fucked himself over by the gasps that run through the table. Except for Carlos, Carlos has to hide his laugh with a cough. "I don't know."

The only reason he drank it so often, even when cameras were off, was because he didn't know what to do with his hands when talking to y/n.

"Charles!" the PR manager hisses. There have been several times in which he has earned that hawk-like look from her, but it still fazes him.

Yet, he doesn't back down.

"If you were going to talk about y/n and blame her for whatever disaster is happening with your company, you should have at least asked her to come. Talking behind her back is low."

y/n's absence didn't surprise him, she was back in L.A. first thing Monday. And although he's glad she's not here to listen to these bunch of assholes blaming her for their mistakes, he wishes she was just to see her, to make sure she'll be okay.

His name is passed through the table again in hisses and warnings, and finally he lets go.

"This is your fault too, kid," Stuart Schaffer has his hand in a fist on top of the table, red blotches coloring his face and neck.

Charles loathes the word kid coming out of his mouth. Him and y/n are of similar age, and she's not a 'kid' in his eyes.

"If you weren't fucking that bitch while she had a boyfriend, this wouldn't be happening."

His ears are ringing and he knows it's his face now that's tinted red.

"Get out, please Charles," the manager intervenes before another word can come out of his mouth, or worse, before he reaches Stuart Schaffer with his hands. "Now."

Charles' veins feel on fire as he gets up from his seat and walks out of the conference room. Biting the tip of his tongue so as not to curse Stuart in every single language he knows.

Carlos makes eye contact with him as Charles closes the see-through door and shakes his head. 'They're going to give you so much shit,' his eyes say. And he's right.

The meeting takes an hour more and he's in one of the offices, buzzed with caffeine and bored out of his mind. He has, regretfully, scrolled down the hell that is Twitter. He's even more pissed off than before, and the caffeine is making him desperate to get out of his seat.

“How bad is it?” Charles asks when Carlos crosses the door.

“A little bad,” Carlos isn’t stressed, he even smiles. “For you mostly. But looking at the bright side, no more Elix.”

No more Elix also means no more money from them. Which won’t make a difference, he thinks.

“Thank God,” Charles lets his head fall down the back of the couch. His nape hurts.

“It also means no more y/n,” Carlos’ tone has changed and he’s looking at Charles with that puzzled look that means he wants Charles to expand on his thoughts.

“She can still come if she wants to,” Charles replies, still feigning tranquility. “I’ll give her a pass.”

And he really hopes y/n wants to. Because all he's done lately every time he goes back to the Ferrari Suite during race weekends is look for her around the room, hoping that she'll be looking at him already. It’s like pieces fall into place when it does. He knows he'll miss her if she's not there anymore.

"Yeah, me too," Carlos plops down on the couch next to him, putting his hands behind his neck. "Do you think she's okay?"

Charles shrugs, an impassive gesture that doesn't reflect the turmoil inside his brain and heart. He is worried about her, and has been for a while. "I'm sure she is, she's back in Los Angeles." They have texted often since he left right after the Grand Prix, but it isn't the same as hearing her voice tell him it's alright.

Carlos stares at him for a few seconds more, thinking his next words through. It's not like he doesn't notice the way Charles looks at y/n every time they're in the same room, he also isn't ignorant to the get-together they shared in Monaco—the one Charles shared zero details about—or what happened in Spain when neither made it to dinner.

But he wonders if Charles is aware of how hard he is falling and what kind of a mess he's getting into.

Carlos likes y/n too, although it took them some time to become acquainted. y/n knows how to throw the exact words at him to tease him, she's brilliant, and when people aren't putting her down, her good mood is contagious. She's like sunshine coming through the curtains on a warm morning.

Yet, it's obvious he'll feel more protective over Charles. He knows it's a mistake to spend so much time on social media, not only looking at what people say about himself, but about Charles and y/n, the cruel lies and twisted truths. He has thought about asking Charles whether he's really aware of the way things look to the outsiders, or how they're tearing him down too.

"What is it?" Charles asks, frowning.

Carlos shakes his head. It's not his place to say anything about his infatuation, if that's what this is. "Why don't you give her a call?"

"Yes, I might." Charles nods absently, looking at his lock screen. Pierre has sent him another link to more news about how he's a homewrecker. Pierre calls him 'loverboy' and makes fun of every new article that comes out about y/n and him. Charles hasn't found it entertaining once.

"Charles," the PR manager doesn't have to raise her voice in the silence of the room. "Come here, right now. Please."

"Told you," Carlos mutters, crossing his legs.

Charles groans and gets up. A reprimand isn't the end of the world when his car gets progressively shittier and luck left him a while ago.

And when he's not sure of when he'll see y/n again.

Charles knows he doesn't need to 'fight' in the name of y/n, or that she even would like him to. She warned him weeks ago that he shouldn't get into the nightmare that this situation is. But he'll be damned if he's going to continue letting people put her down at his expense.

y/n is not a damsel in distress, he knows. And standing up for her doesn't make him a knight in shining armor. It makes him a decent human being and a good friend.

Charles thinks really hard about this, way often. Is it okay that his friend makes his heartbeat quicken every time they're together? He feels like a teenager again, with butterflies flying around his stomach when he thinks about her. Not to mention the fact that he's tried to flirt with her several times, to no avail.

There are many things in the world that Charles wishes he could change. His luck, to begin with. But he really wishes things were different when it comes to y/n. He wants her to have peace, he wishes she'd never had to deal with panic attacks or anxiety induced by hate. He wishes they'd met in another time, when things weren't so fragile and the world could stay away from them, and wherever he knows he wants things with her to go.

And he wishes he knew if he's brave enough to deal with all of it.

"Hello?"

The wave of emotion hits him from head to toe and it takes him a moment to catch his breath. He's worse than a teenager, he knows. Charles has never acted this way before, and it makes him vulnerable in a way he doesn't completely dislike, but isn't comfortable with either.

"Hello y/n," he says, after clearing his throat. "I was um– I was just thinking about you."

There is a pause on the other side of the line and Charles looks at the clock on his nightstand. He did the math to figure out the timezones three times, yet he does it again.

"Hi Charles," her voice comes after a sigh of relief, "Were you?"

"Uh– yeah, I– I just wanted to know how you're doing."

Another prolonged silence and Charles adds: "Is that okay?"

y/n chuckles, "Of course it's okay."

"So, how are you?" Charles continues, anxiously pacing around the room. He wants to ask the right questions. "How's L.A.?" maybe that's not one of them.

"Well, it's Lalaland, what can you expect?" there is movement in the background and then a door shuts. "How's Maranello?"

"Well..." Charles isn't sure if Elix has called her already and he doesn't want to be the one to break the news. "The usual. Praying for improvement every week."

"That's something we have in common," y/n's chuckle comes without humor this time. "But I'm going back to New York in a few days, so that's something to look forward to."

Charles smiles. "Do you need any help with moving?"

"Are you flying from Italy to help me move back to New York?" y/n laughs and her genuineness is back.

"I could, if you needed me to."

He has never felt more awkward in his life, or giddier.

"Thank you, Charles. But I have two suitcases with me, I can handle it like a big girl."

It's Charles' turn to laugh, he has stopped pacing. “Just let me know if you need me, y/n.”

“I think I will.” y/n says, and after some consideration: “Can you stay with me on the phone? Just for a little while.”

And Charles is embarrassingly willing to drop everything and stay on the phone for as long as she needs to.

“Yes, sure,” he replies instead, “What do you want to talk about?”

And they talk about everything and nothing. Silly commercials, pet-peeves about airports, favorite colors and long forgotten songs. It takes more than a little while, but neither care about how much time has passed.

It’s not mental gymnastics realizing he likes her. Likes her, likes her. He feels like he’s inside one of her RomComs; already pining for her. What would the name be? Something cheesy and catchy, like 'Racing Hearts'. He likes it. And hates it, too.

“Y/n?”

“Yeah?” She interrupts her story about the nightmare that Paris was when filming Parisian Valentine, not minding cutting her story short.

Regret comes immediately because he doesn’t know how to fill the silence now, not with the words he wants to say.

That he knows how delicate things are right now. That he likes her for who she has shown him to be and how he is impatient to know even more about her. But he knows he’s probably going to scare her away if those silly words actually come out of his mouth.

“I like talking to you,” Charles says instead. The caffeine hasn't left his system, but he knows the new buzz comes from something else.

“But?” Y/n prompts, he can hear the change in her tone.

“No buts. I like it, I like you.”

“I like you too, Charles.” She says softly, and he pictures the small smile on her face. The one she saves for the times she's one hundred percent comfortable, like when they were at the lake in Monaco.

“And I want you to be okay,”

y/n lets out a shaky breath that makes the microphone crackle. “We are okay, though, aren’t we?” She’s thinking about the tabloids again.

“We are okay. We’ve been on the phone for two hours,” he laughs, and, regretfully, lets out a yawn before he can help it.

“Get some rest, Charlie,” y/n lowers her voice too. “Thank you for staying with me.”

The endearment, although common when people try to be cute to him, sends another wave of giddiness through his body.

"Anytime," he doesn't fight her goodbye because it's a lost cause, especially after he let on his tiredness. "I mean it."

"Thank you," she repeats, "You're a good friend."

Charles smiles, that's enough for now, more than enough for now.

"See you soon, y/n." Charles assures, a smile on his face.

"Goodnight Charlie."

─── team principal radio: ❝thank you for reading! are we loving charles or not? thank you to everyone who lets me know their thoughts and interpretations of Delicate, it's incredibly motivating for me to keep writing and it makes me super happy! if you're a ghost reader, i also appreciate you, but don't be shy to interact♡❞

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gayerthanevertbh · 2 years ago

Text

infidelity | futile devices pt. 1

pairings: fuckboy!natasha romanoff x fem!reader

natasha romanoff masterlist | series masterlist | navigation

summary: you and wanda have been best friends ever since you were little babies, and you’ve went through a lot with her. in august 2019 when you met wanda’s girlfriend, natasha, you completely fell in love with her. what happens when the three of you create a love triangle that could possibly ruin everything?

warnings: intense staring, infidelity, and nothing much since it’s only the start of the story.

author’s note: enjoy the first part of the story! what do you want to happen in the next part? let me know!

Years ago, before I knew what futile devices were, I met Wanda at kindergarten in our small town in New England. She started out as a bully, but after we ate lunch together, I knew we would become more than just a bully and a victim. Since then, she has protected me, especially from those who didn't like me very much. I may have had a crush on her at first, but I was aware that if I said anything inappropriate, our friendship would end. I couldn't stop myself from having a crush on Wanda Maximoff at the time. She was a tall brunette with big green eyes who always tried to protect me. We've been through so much together as best friends, and we even shared our first kiss because no one would dare to kiss me. Wanda, on the other hand, always saved her first mind-blowing kiss for me, and it was surprisingly good when we did it. I recall her saying, "There you go, now you can kiss anyone in this room," but that never happened. I was too afraid to be in a relationship after witnessing Wanda's, which was not particularly good.

She told me the meaning of futile devices while we were in the park together. “Beyond words,” she says. “Futile means vain, pointless. In other words, if you want to say your love for them, you can’t. It’s just too much.”

“Is that supposed to be romantic?” I asked, she only lets out a controlled chuckle before drinking from her flask.

“Sure, if you want it to be.”

Since then, I knew that I could never describe my love for Wanda – because it was too much, too impotent, and vain. If I say it out loud, what would she do? Perhaps she would leave me in the air, possibly never speaking to me again. But knowing her so well, I knew she wouldn’t do that to me. It was still scary to say it out loud, and I’m sure that I could never say how much I love her – no matter how painful it could be.

We stayed friends until we graduated from high school together. Wanda had a boyfriend named Chucky, and I was with Brandon, my date because he was the only boy I could find. Brandon was with me the majority of the time because I didn't want to be alone this summer. I suppose you could say he was my first boyfriend with whom I never lost my virginity. We split up when our first semester began. When he left me, I didn't feel too much emotion; in fact, I was relieved that he did. Wanda asked why I was always smiling when she brought me chocolates after my breakup.

“Aren’t you sad that Brandon left you?” I shook my head, eating the last piece of chocolate bar in the wrapper. “You’re so weird, you know that?”

“Yeah, but I’m your weirdo.”

She only laughs, agreeing with a nod.

“Yes you are,” she said. “Let’s just watch a movie, yeah? We still have to study tomorrow.”

Months later, I was working at a bakery shop while Wanda was trying to learn to be a bartender since it’s always been her first dream job. I did like my life for a little while, working at a bakery shop was the best thing that ever happened to me. Wanda did like hers since she came home with a drunk look on her face. When August came along, we started to become distant from each other. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’ve gotten so busy with my job and my school work, and she was always out since she has a new girlfriend. I never expected that from her, dating a girl. I mean, I always knew that she was bisexual, but it was unexpected when she told me that she was truly in love with this college girl from a different university.

I was a little jealous because Wanda had been spending too much time with her instead of with me, and if I had to lie to myself, I'd say I was happy for her - but I wasn't. How could you choose someone you met two months ago and decide to leave me hanging? What happened to both of us? This isn't going to last, I tell myself. That was something I had to tell myself in order not to get hurt. But every time she comes home, I get the impression that I'm no longer number one in her heart.

In the third week of September, Wanda decided to bring her girlfriend over to our apartment, with our two friends from the university. While I was preparing for dinner, our friend Peter and Kate was at the door. I opened it slowly and gave them a big smile on my face since I don’t know what other emotions I should use.

“Did you only invite us because Wanda has this amazing hot girlfriend?” Kate giggled, which I nodded in response. She knew that I was joking, I never thought I have humor.

“Are you also excited to meet her?”

“Hey, maybe she’s nice!” Peter exclaimed happily, walking towards the dining area as he sits beside Kate. “It’s only the right time for Wanda, I mean she always has this boyfriend or girlfriend until she’ll break up with them two weeks later.”

“She seems like a green flag,” Kate said. “Aren’t you happy for her? You guys have been best friends ever since you came out from your mother’s vagina.”

I chuckled, “We met at kindergarten.”

“The point is, you should be happy for her. I know you’re still in love with her–”

“We don’t talk about that.”

“-But maybe you should start moving on,” she finishes herself, sighing deeply. “I have a dude for you, his name is Steve. He’s in my class.”

Will this guy help me move on from Wanda Maximoff?

“Oh yeah? What does he do?”

“He’s apparently taking medicine, which means he’s also not available. People who take medicine are always busy, like extremely busy.”

I turned around, shrugging my shoulders. “So what’s the point of me dating this guy then if he’s not available?”

She mimicked my shrug, playing with her fingers. “I don’t know, I was just suggesting–”

“Thanks for the suggestion but, I’m good being on my own.”

I’ve always been on my own, even though Wanda was always around.

30 minutes later, I heard murmuring from the other room, and I realized Wanda had brought her girlfriend, who had caught my eye. She was tall - but not too tall - and had her hair tied in the back of her head; she also had green eyes like Wanda, but hers were darker, so I couldn't see the details of her pupils. When the woman caught my eye, I turned away and hugged Wanda briefly, asking, "So this is her?"

“Yeah,” she replied. “This is Natasha, my girlfriend for a month.”

I cast a quick glance at Natasha and shook her hand; it was calloused but not too rough on my skin. She smiled warmly and said, "It's nice to meet you, Y/n. Wanda has told me lots of stories about you.”

“Like how I’m such a bad friend?” I said in a joking matter, watching as Wanda playfully rolls her eyes. “I’m glad you can make it, how about you sit down? The food is ready.”

I returned to my table and sat beside Wanda while Natasha was in the opposite direction, her eyes roaming all over the place. I assumed that she was enticed by our home since it was full of framed paintings and a telephone from the corner of the room – it wasn’t working, we just decided that it looked nice in our apartment.

“So where do you study, Romanoff?” Kate asked while drinking from the wine glass that I bought from a dollar store. Natasha sighed and placed her fork on the plate, slowly chewing the food.

“I study at Columbia,” she responded quietly. “I met Wanda at my university, and we hit it off right away.”

“But aren’t you from NYU, Wanda?”

“I just had a quick visit at the university, to see if I still had other options.”

“Were you ever going to tell me that you’ll be studying at Columbia?” I asked, trying my best not to show defectiveness about this conversation. “I thought we agreed to study together and graduate in the same school together.”

“That was the plan, and I want to study with you,” Wanda said, sighing through her nose. “I was just looking at my options. If I didn’t end up studying at NYU, then I’d study at Columbia.”

“But if you ever did study in Columbia, were you going to tell me?”

I was hurt by this information since Wanda knows that she was my only friend, and will always be my best friend. Before we even started college, we both agreed that attending the same school was the best option. I guess she changed her mind after meeting Natasha, who appears to be my nemesis. It’s not like I didn’t want the best for her, but her going to the same school as I made me feel like I was important to her. I would say I’m a little self-centered.

“Of course,” said Wanda with a small smile on her face, holding hands with Natasha. “We still live together, you know? What would be a harm studying in at another university?”

She was right, she has always been right.

I caught Natasha's gaze while we were eating and talking about physics, which I dislike talking about because I despise science. Her eyes appeared... hungry. But I couldn't assume she wanted me that way because she had Wanda, so I shifted my gaze to Kate's. But I could still feel her eyes on me as if they were glued to me only. When I returned my gaze to her, she was staring at Wanda. As strange as it may sound, I liked how she gave me those stares in her eyes because no one would ever stare at me like that.

“What do you study, Y/n?” Natasha asked, eating a forkful of meat that I had just baked in the oven.

“Literature,” I replied quietly, placing my foot on top of the other since I feel like I’m having anxiety talking to this woman who looks like a senior. “You? You seem like a person who doesn’t study.”

“And she speaks,” Wanda giggled, causing everyone to laugh too. “Who taught you how to talk back, missy?”

I shrugged, “Just myself.”

"Photography, in case you were wondering," the redhead replied, wiping her mouth with a tissue as she drank a bottle of beer that I had opened for her. "I photograph places, people, and a variety of other subjects. That’s why me and Wanda are a match, she likes photography.”

There was no way I'd ever match this obnoxious, self-centered, narcissistic individual. I wouldn't call her a narcissist, but she certainly has the appearance of one. Plus, why am I thinking that I could ever get with her? She clearly has those lovey-dovey eyes on Wanda; not me.

“What year are you in?” Kate chimes in, looking at Natasha with curiosity in her eyes.

“Fourth year,” she said. “This is my last year, actually. After that, I might move back to Ohio.”

“Why Ohio?” Peter suddenly asked. Natasha only sighs in response and takes another drink from her beer, smacking her lips together, as if she doesn’t know what to say next or do. Yet, she still replies in that husk tone.

“I have a family there,” she slowly responded, looking briefly at Wanda and then towards me. “Wanda says you’re from Ohio too, that’s where you two met.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But we moved to New York shortly after high school, I’m not technically from here.”

“It seems like it, you don’t have that New Yorker accent.”

"But Peter does," Wanda laughs as she pours herself another cheap red wine and swirls it in her glass. "How do you like living in New York?" It's as if we're in our thirties, but half of us are only in our twenties, and Natasha is almost in her late twenties because Wanda told me her age.

“It’s great,” he says in a positive tone and clasped his hands together on his lap. “The rent is expensive, but it’s all good. I still like the smell of the air here, it never gets old.”

“New York isn’t the most ideal city,” Kate chimed in again. “But you know, they have good schools here. My parents are billionaires, so like I don’t really have to worry about rent.”

“I wish I lived in your life,” I murmured, smirking at her playfully, which Wanda saw and felt uncomfortable in her seat. Was she jealous? “You have billionaire parents and live that rich life, I’m just a girl from Ohio who is incredibly in love with her job.”

“Didn’t you say you work at the bakery?” now, Natasha’s eyes were on me as she spoke. I slowly nodded my head before taking a sip from my wine glass, licking it between my lips. “Do you like working there?”

“It pays the rent, so yeah.”

After dinner, Peter and Kate said their goodbyes and returned home, leaving just me, Wanda, and Natasha on the couch. I was scrolling through Tinder on my phone when I noticed Natasha giving Wanda a head massage and kissing her on the forehead. When I see them do this, especially right in front of me, it makes my stomach churn. How did Wanda find someone so quickly and not me? Why isn't she head over heels in love with me? Why can't I be the one? But if I keep comparing myself to this woman, I know I'll end up feeling terrible.

“You guys should get a room, you’re making me want to vomit," I muttered under my breath, turning off my phone to get a better look at them - but that turned out to be the most sickening thing I've ever done because I was watching them kissing sweetly right in front of me, causing me to stand up and walk back to my room. I went to bed with my lights turned off after a quick warm shower and skincare routine. They were either going to kill me or that girlfriend Wanda had brought into this apartment. Throughout this eventful evening, her eyes were on me instead of Wanda’s – which is kind of suspicious.

I took a deep breath and rolled over on my back, clasping my hands together as my palms sweat. I'm not sure what was wrong with me; I just had this strange feeling about Natasha. Something thumped inside of me when I met her. I sighed and whispered, “Futile devices, how ridiculous that sounds.”

And it truly does if you think about your best friend’s girlfriend.

it gets real in the next part lol

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff fanfic #black widow x you #black widow x reader #futile devices series by anne

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