#my third self was a bare shell of a coping mechanism

[grunesdragon]

meditation 1

[thathorseboy]

I hate the stigma around “horse girls” for so many reasons.

For one, it’s another example of shaming young ladies for just liking shit. “Oh I am so sorry that Jenny has interests and dreams because she is a living being, let’s bully the shit out of her until she is a shell of her former self”.

For another, it makes it to where the public genuinely seems to look down upon equestrians, either seeing them as horse girls, rich polo players, or dumb farmers, which is another thing that I hate: classism. I worked as a horseback tour guide for a year or two, and the amount of people who assumed I was dumb and treated me as such was appalling. I’m obviously not all that dumb if I am keeping you alive while you’re riding a 900lb animal of prey that you have never met before.

Third, back to horse girls, as much as I hear “my horse is my therapy” and other equestrians look down on those people, horses really are great for therapy. My horse was bought for the purpose of emotional support, hell I barely consider myself an equestrian because I only ride for mine and his exercise, he is my friend and companion. While I would love to one day work together and give him a job he likes, we’re both pretty young and need to figure out what we’re good at. “Horse girls” are often bullied out of what is usually an innate childhood love for animals, big and small, and I hate that. It cuts them off from yet another possible coping mechanism, much less a whole new world for them to explore. It makes them bitter.

Best part is: I wasn’t a horse girl. I was born a girl, sure, but I didn’t grow up thinking of horses. At 16 I rode my first horse while helping at a volunteer farm, and that day I struck gold. Growing up I wanted to raise livestock, and at 6 for career day I wore my overalls and brought a stuffed goat on a leash. I went to a private school (my family were doctors and nurses but still we barely afforded that) and I was bullied relentlessly that day and decided I needed to find a new career.

12 years later and I’m back to a love of livestock. I’m, legally, a whole new person, but my character lives on. That childhood love of caring for animals was revived on a whim, and then grew to encompass my heart.

I started my journey into livestock in high school, and was STILL BULLIED because I live in a larger city in the south, which just oozes classist ideals. Now I embrace being called a horse boy, but there were months where I was ashamed of how pathetic I was, only holding onto life because of some stupid horse. Buckaroo was and is my saving grace, and the fact that I felt ashamed that I loved him so much is pretty fucked in my opinion.

What I’m saying is this: kids are mean, and need to be taught that bullying others just because they are passionate about something is wrong. The stigma around “horse girls” and equestrians and farmers alike is unbearable and loathsome.

Sorry this was so long, but it’s always on my mind.

[peachyteabuck]

of pleasure ~ act ii, “if we ruled the world”

summary: a sort-of non-avengers au where everyone has their powers and absolutely no one is in a highly powerful mob (or, at least, that’s what the feds think). 

or, a commission in three parts for anonymous, who asked for a series about wanda x natasha x reader.

pairing: wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff x reader (focus on natasha romanoff x reader)

words: 3,502

trigger warnings: flashback, angst if you squint, heavy smut, sub!natasha, mention of violence/self doubt, alcohol as a coping mechanism

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

READ ACT I HERE

Natasha awkwardly ushers Wanda out, biting at her nearly-bleeding nail beds and carefully avoiding the wide, prying eyes of the large bodyguards she has stationed outside of her office at all hours. If she were in a more level-headed state she would glare and snap at them and threaten to fire them – she would be Natasha Romanoff, head bitch in charge and a woman whose firey hair gets its color from the blood in her veins.

But she’s not Natasha Romanoff, she’s Nat – a woman who can barely make it to the plush chair behind her desk before memories of the best fuck in her life are pouring over her. She doesn’t know how she remembers so much, but every time she blinks the room looks more and more like the bar you two met in.

It was Natasha’s bar, but it looked nothing like it did now. Then she had just risen in the ranks, was still earning the respect of patrons and those below her. It was a difficult night; Bucky had gotten hurt and Nat was drinking her fears away – desperate to corral them into some corner of her mind instead of letting them run loose.

If she couldn’t protect her best friend, how could she protect the mob? Her hands nearly shook as she took another shot. The assets? The people that had just begun to work under her? Was she meant for this? Was she good enough?  

She was on her third vodka tonic of the night when you intervened, taking up the empty barstool to her left. She had seen you before – you were a bartender who was a previous hire but worked hours Natasha was often busy which meant the two of you rarely crossed paths.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Natasha scoffs, though a little slurred, hoping to avoid something akin to a PR nightmare.

You shrug, replacing her alcoholic drink with a tall glass of water. “Part of my job is making sure the sad drunks don’t do anything they’ll regret later. Now drink some water, I don’t want to clean vomit from the grout of my bar.

“YOUR bar?” Natasha rolls her eyes, her words starting to slur and movements beginning to slow. “Don’t you know this is MY bar?”

You sigh. “When the owner is too drunk to see straight, line of succession dictates it is now my bar.”

Natasha furrows her brow and shakes her head as two of the biggest women you have ever seen carry her out of the establishment and towards her apartment. “…But I’m a lesbian…”

Somehow, through the hazy parts of that night, that incredibly embarrassing memory reigns clear as day.

Natasha’s retching into a toilet she does not recognize in a bathroom she’s never seen before. To be fair, though, she did not have much time to admire/familiarize herself with the décor before she ripped off her shirt and then vomiting up everything from her appendix to her lungs. If she was anything more than a shell of a woman after this night, she’d be the luckiest girl on the face of the Earth.

“Sh…sh, it’s okay,” she hears your voice in the distance and feels your hand on the small of her back. “It’s okay, get it all out.”

When she’s finally done, you hand her a tall class of cold water and many, many painkillers. Natasha understands what to do without prompting – swallowing everything you give her with as much eagerness as a dog finding a pill within a spoonful of peanut butter. Makes the same face, too.

By sheer luck, you get her into your bed without her vomiting on anything. Natasha falls asleep easily, eyes unfocused as they close.

“Thank you,” she mumbles just before falling asleep.

“No problem,” you tell her.

You end up sleeping on the couch a room away, waking up every few hours to check on her. The only time she wakes up is when you’re making breakfast the next morning – eggs and turkey bacon and coffee black as the asphalt Natasha would’ve eaten if you didn’t help her home. You gesture with the spatula in your dominant hand, the other on the handle to keep the pan steady.

“Sit, come eat,” you tell her – voice comforting but direct.

Natasha follows the orders easily, her eyes downcast until you take your place in the chair across from her. Only then does she look up, struggling to avoid your heavy gaze.

“Bad night?” you ask between bites of food.

Natasha sighs, swallowing down her food with coffee. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

She shakes her head. “Nah, not a fan of reliving something I tried to forget.”

“You wanna fuck about it?”

Natasha nearly spits out the remnant of her eggs onto the table. “Are you serious?”

When she meets your eyes, she doesn’t see you laughing or smiling or even about to laugh or smile. All she sees is a beautiful woman offering her sex after what is quite possibly the worst night of her life.

While Natasha gazes at you in sheer horror, disgust - you look almost…relaxed. Chill. Decompressed.

Natasha stays quiet as you speak, with one eyebrow raised and your lips curled into a smirk. “Are you?”

The woman across from you doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything back. For a long while, she remains statuesque – both in beauty and in stillness. She doesn’t say anything until she’s finished her food and placed her plate gingerly into the kitchen sink. Even then, she avoids your eyes ad grips the edge of the counter like a lifeline.

“Only if I can shower first.”

You laugh with your head thrown back, deep and loud and boisterous. It’s the most beautiful laugh Natasha’s ever heard, and her heart aches when you finally speak.  

“Sure thing, Red. Towels in the third shelf in the cabinet, use as many as you like.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even meet your eyes as she follows muscle memory to the place where she puked her guts up in the night previous.

Once she figures out your shower and turns the knob marked with a red H all the way on, Natasha looks around, peaking in the cabinets and under the sink – a bad habit from the days of training. She doesn’t know what she’s expected to find, but nothing of the sort piques her interest. It’s all…quite regular, normal even.

Under the sink she sees tons of cleaning supplies, what she guesses are doubles of various beauty/hygiene products, empty travel-sized bags.

The mirror-fronted cabinet is filled with over the counter medication, sample-sized beauty products, and enough skin care merchandise to leave all of Manhattan pimple-free.

When she closes it, the thick steam turns her reflection into a mere blob, and only then does Natasha Romanoff strip off her clothes.

The water burns her skin, bites at her cuts, makes her bruises sting. If she was anywhere else, she’d probably scream and cry, maybe pick at the scabs starting to form.

Here, though, she swallows the stone that’s accrued in her throat and ignores the even bigger boulder that’s made its home in the center of her chest. She grabs for the shampoo (then body wash, then conditioner) and tries to clean herself.

The spicy mint liquid (did she mention that everything was coordinated? Not even the same brand, just a perfectly harmonized sympathy of scents) works for the dirt, for the sweat, for the weird stickiness she doesn’t recognize that clings to the skin of her thighs and palms and, somehow, places inside her.

She doesn’t know how long it is when she finally steps out – pads of her fingers and toes wrinkled and her lungs clouded with the steam. She can barely breathe, but she has a feeling its not because of the thick air.

The towel – deep and maroon – is the fluffiest and softest thing Natasha’s ever felt against her skin. She pads back to the room she slept in last night, only a little shocked to find the bed made and you, barefoot in a baggy t-shirt and running shorts, reading a thick book you’re about halfway through.

She catches flashes of the front cover – something she dismally recognizes. It’s a spy novel, one of those cheesy romance ones that are incredibly popular with middle-aged moms and lonely Christian college students.

“Whatcha readin?” Natasha asks.

You look up and smile after looking her over. “Some garbage. Borrowed it from a friend after she said I’m, well,” you let out a self-deprecating laugh. “that I’m ‘super lonely.’ Which isn’t not true.”

Natasha smiles back. “Still sounds kinda mean.”

You shrug. “Truth hurts, I guess.”

There are a few moments of silence as you and her stare at each other – the kind of silence Natasha doesn’t seem to mind. Normally she hates the quiet, feels the need to fill whatever void she feels is created by lack of speech.

Still, she’s the person to break it. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“That towel,” you say, smirk still on your lips. “Matches your hair.”

Natasha smiles a little, avoiding your gaze as she searches for the dirty clothes from last night. Without hesitation, you push the clothes toward her with your foot – except now they’re clean, folded, fresh.

“Thanks,” Natasha mumbles. “I…thanks.”

You shrug, telling her its no problem. “Assumed you wouldn’t want to put on your dirty clothes, so…”

Natasha nods but says nothing, reaching for the clothes. She stops when she notices you putting your book to the side and readjusting against the headboard. Natasha stands there, clutching where the towel tucks into itself – waiting for whatever you’re going to say next.

“C’mere,” you say, beckoning her over with a single crooked finger.

She follows, still silent, walking to the edge of your bed with shaky hands and awkward legs. She hesitates, waiting for confirmation.

“It’s alright, baby girl, c’mere,” you say again, opening your legs further. An invitation, Natasha realizes. It makes her heart speed up.

She gives you a small nod before moving forward, adjusting her towel along the way with her eyes trained on the bed.

You guide her so that her back – still covered by the towel – presses into your chest.

“If you ever want to stop,” you whisper, intertwining your hands with hers. The pads of her fingers are still slightly wrinkled and sensitive and she nearly moans as her skin meets yours. “Just tell me, okay?”

Natasha gives a small nod, moving closer to you.

“This alright?” you ask, moving to undo her towel.

She nods again, then tenses as her damp skin is exposed to the cool air. Your warm hands make goosebumps erupt over her soft, sweet-smelling skin. Her breath hitches as your teeth trail across her back - leaving kisses along her shoulder and up into her hairline then on the shell of her ear.

“Just relax, baby,” you tell her. “Don’t worry about anything, just let me take care of you.”

Natasha nods silently, readjusting before pressing back into you. The towels falls as she does, and as it bunches uncomfortably you grab at it to throw it to the floor. With her last veil of modesty tossed carelessly aside Natasha blushes, moving to cross her arms over her chest.

You tsk, moving her arms from in front of her. “Don’t hide from me, baby,” you mumble into her ear. “Don’t ever hide your beautiful body from me.”

Natasha stays silent, hands resting outside your knees. She does nod, though, and presses into you once more. One of your arms goes across her chest, keeping her own arms in place at her sides. The other trails between her legs, fingertips ghosting over her thighs and across her lower stomach. You can hear Natasha’s breath hitch each time your skin meets hers.

“You like that, baby girl?” You ask. She nods again, small squeaks leaving her as you collect some of the slick that’s dripping onto your sheets. “You like it when I touch you like this?”

Natasha moans as you plunge one, two fingers into her. She watches for a few thrusts before clenching her eyes shut and letting her head fall back into your shoulder and panting into your bare neck. It’s not long before you can feel her pussy clenching around your fingers, her breath coming out in light pants and moans deeper than before.

“I-I’m,” you can hear her try to swallow despite the dryness of her mouth. “Fuck, I’m gonna come.”

You smile and bite at the shell of her ear. “It’s okay, baby girl, you can come, you can come all you want tonight.”

It only takes a few more crooks of your fingers, a few more circles around her clit for Natasha to throw her head back and nearly scream – her legs shaking as she gushes over your fingers and wrists and sheets. Her whole body – once quite tense – now slacks against your chest. You’re a little taken aback by her squirting, and that this is normal enough for Natasha that she has no problem ruining another lover’s bed. Somehow it makes it that much hotter, makes you that much wetter, as you manhandle her onto her back. She’s pliant, laying nice and open for you - even as you grab the strap and cleaned cock from the back of one of the drawers in your nightside table, even as you slide one of your biggest toys into her soaked, aching pussy.

Natasha’s whole body is tense, each individual muscle chasing pleasure. She’s got her knees pulled up to her chest, one arm holding them in place and the other gripping your sheets. She doesn’t remember the last time she’d been folded in half, but now she wishes she could spend every day like this.

“Oh, god,” she moans, high-pitched and whiny. “God, it feels so good.”

You laugh a little, catching her lips in a kiss as you thrust shallowly into her. “Yeah, baby girl? You like getting fucked like this?”

Natasha nods, gasping each time the leather of the strap brushes her clit. “Yes, fuck yesyesyes.”

Your hand wraps around Nat’s throat, pushing her further into the bed. “Yes, of course she does. My big powerful mobster loves getting her pussy demolished, doesn’t she? Needs to be fucked so that she can focus on her job?”

The woman in question is nodding and babbling absolute nonsense – and, in the low light, you’re sure you see tears fall down her face.

One of your hands comes down to properly rub at her neglected clit. Natasha nearly screams as you do, hips bucking in a wild, animalistic way.

“You gonna come like this?” you whisper, leaning down to kiss between her brows. “Is my nasty little slut gonna come from me fucking her this good?”

Natasha nods again, each thrust soliciting another desperate, high-pitched moan from somewhere deep in her throat.

“Yeah?” you faux-pout, voice dropping as you watch her eyes roll back into her head. You spit on her cunt, Natasha wailing as the slick collecting there allows you to rub harder, faster at the most sensitive part of her.

She comes with a shout – with a loud, deep moan you wish you’d recorded. It takes you a moment, takes the pounding in your chest and ears a moment to recede, for you to realize your abdomen (as well as hers) were covered in her wetness. Her dry lips and flittering eyes only give more credence to your understanding, to your realization that she had squirted all over you.

Natasha groans as you pull out, the delicateness of her pussy as well as the emptiness combining into a cognitive dissonance she could feel in the tip of her toes.

You get her something to drink – an unmarked Gatorade bottle you’re praying isn’t spiked (you’ve been a bartender long enough to usually know what is and isn’t, but somehow Natasha seems like someone able to escape your watchful eye).

It takes a few minutes for the color to return to Natasha’s face, for her to ask if she can get you off, too. You smile and kiss her again, silently sitting up.

You finally come with your pussy hovering over Natasha’s panting mouth, her face becoming soaked with your wetness and, soon, your cum. She’s able to find the mental focus to clean some of it up, and it takes all of you not to pounce on her as you watch her, with hooded eyes, desperate to for praise as she licks at her face.

“You good, darling?” you coo, wiping at her cheeks with your thumbs.

Natasha sniffles. “Yeah, yeah I’m good.”

You nod, running your hands through her sweaty hair. “Alright, I’m gonna grab you another Gatorade, okay? I’m not gonna be gone long, I promise.”

She nods, making no effort to move. Natasha lays there, practically inert as she hears you leave the room. She’s too tired to look at anything but the ceiling – the terrifying reality of what she has to do next settling over her.

Still, she closes her eyes and listens to you padding into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. The faint sound of the bottle opening, the cap being thrown away and hitting the side of the metal trash can. It’s all so mundane but everything Natasha needs right now – reprieve from her mistakes and the consequences of them.

You help her up, when you get back, so she can drink without coughing and sputtering and drowning on dry land. One hand remains occupied with holding the bottle of liquid, while your other arm wraps around your back. It rests at her side, with your thumb rubbing circles into the heated skin.

You coo sweet praises into her hairline, your legs bracketing her in. When the dull-orange liquid is gone you toss it to the side – pulling Natasha down with you.

You fall asleep easily, Natasha resting on your bare chest. She knows when you’ve fallen into unconsciousness because your fingers stop carding through her hair, working through the knots that have found themselves there.

She waits, listening as your heartbeat and breathing slow to an even pace. Natasha lays there for a long while, savoring the feeling being in your arms – of the delicious tiredness in her muscles. Wide awake, she waits until the orange-yellow sun begins to light up the room.

You lay there, wonderfully oblivious to Natasha getting redressed and finding her dead, now-cracked phone; unaware of her holding her shoes until the front door was closed softly and silently.

She doesn’t put her shoes on until the gets in the elevator, and doesn’t cry until she finds her way home.

The memory is long, vivid – she can nearly feel your skin under her fingertips. It’s then that the reality of the situation hits her, that what she thinks is happening is, in fact, really actually fucking happening:

Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff’s best friend and right-hand woman, is dating a woman Natasha has lowkey been in love with for about a year.

Has she seen you since that night? No. She’s got a picture of you, one she found after cleaning out a thick stack of photos (like, physical ass photos) from the bar. It’s you, happy, pouring drinks with both hands. She’s got it tucked away somewhere in her bedroom beneath old medications she never finished and note she scribbled.

Has she made an effort to? No. Never to look at the photo, or to find you. It should be easy, considering you work at the bar she owns – but ever since that night…she’s avoided it. The bar.

Does she still feel a gut-wrenching guilt gnawing at her as she folds herself into a fetal position on her office floor? Absolutely.

Natasha finds herself in the center of an ethical dilemma of the worst kind; the rare kind that a gun or knife or sly smile can’t get her out of. For what is likely the first time in her whole life-slash-professional-career, she probably actually should really deal with whatever corner she’s backed herself into.

Isn’t there some girl code, or whatever, that says she should tell Wanda what’s happened? Shouldn’t she at least warn you? But, even if she wanted to, how would she do that, given she hasn’t so much as looked at you since she snuck out of your apartment? Should she warn Wanda? What would she even say!?

“Hey, trusted fist of my multi-billion-dollar operation and also girl I know who has superpowers and is definitely hiding from a few governments, I got fucked by your girlfriend about a year back and I haven’t been the same since! She railed me until I was a new person! It’s that hilarious! Please laugh at this with me!”

Natasha groans and lets her head drop to her desk. She is royally and totally fucked.

(And, to her dismay, not in a good way).

[pandoraswrld]

SHE

— in which juliet reveals her darkest fears

characters / juliet kang, boo yuna

words / 1.8k

warnings / this is sad, angsty and quite a heavy piece, mentions of past self harm, suicidal thoughts — if i missed anything please let me know!

Juliet’s always felt like this. She’s always felt like crap, right from the beginning. She’s not entirely sure what caused her to feel bad today, maybe it was the fact that she had woken up at six o’ clock today which would be the third day in a row she’d woken up after the sun had gone down, or maybe it was because she had missed two dance practices and the third was looming over her as she chose to lay in bed in the darkness instead.

With the comeback happening awfully soon Juliet knows she’s disappointing her trainers, she’s disappointing the team, heck, even disappointing the company as Jangmi would say. She wished she could get out of bed but it wasn’t that simple, something was dragging her down, she constantly felt as though she had this weight on her shoulders and no matter what she would do it would never leave her.

As long as she’s known, she's always had this weight. She was hardly the favourite child, never the girlfriend or never even the ‘best’ friend, she always thought she had little to lose. Juliet would care more about her role in life if only she hadn’t realised she was nothing but a downgrade or a placeholder at such a young age, still, she felt weighed down. Lately, the weight had become more and more suffocating and way more harder for her to deal with, like it was pushing her down into a deep river and drowning out any last positive thoughts she could conjure up.

She’s tried all the remedies. She has used her mother’s advice of getting up and out, enjoying the outside world, getting some exercise in but that never worked. She’s tried to find healthy coping mechanisms, art, dancing, singing, but now she’s not even sure if she likes it anymore. This job has taken so much from her. She used to enjoy the rush of performing on stage, the cheers would give her so much adrenaline and the fans always made her day. Now every day is more draining than the last, the choreographies bored her and she could barely muster any energy to sing.

None of those so-called solutions worked, they never did. Even the temporary relief from the bad decisions never lasted as long as she wanted it to, as long as she needed it to. Her hand fell down to her thighs, the scars were faint, a simple reminder of just how much she feels all the time. She has regrets, god she has so many. She can never get back all the dignity she had lost during those months, sometimes she questions if she wants it back. Was her dignity even worth losing? It’s not like she had much of it to start with.

Some days she wishes she just hadn’t run away and auditioned for SM, then maybe she’d still love the things that used to make her happy. Occasionally, she does imagine what her life could have been like if she didn’t audition for SM, for one she thinks her parents would love her a lot more than they do now, not that they’ve ever said it. She could’ve continued down whatever path they chose for her, making them “the happiest parents ever” and her brother wouldn’t have had to carry the burden of fulfilling the family legacy — not that having a baby at the ripe old age of nineteen was really helping that.

She liked to describe her life as a line, a long red line that would twist and knot with every significant moment. To Juliet she felt as though she could just cut the line at any point, no thoughts. Just like the fates, she was Aptropos and she had the shears to decide when things would end. She always thought, what was the point of continuing the line if all that was left were ugly little knots.

“Hey Juliet! Where we–”

She hadn’t realised it until her bedroom door had burst open but she had balled herself up into a corner on her bed, her hands were bunched up in her hair and strands had fallen all around her.

This was probably Juliet’s worst fear, someone seeing her in one of her weakest states. She didn’t want to look up at whoever just came in, simply hoping that they’d leave.

“Are you okay?” It was Yuna. She sounded uncomfortable, she wasn’t sure what she should do, Juliet was clearly not okay, anyone could see that.

The silence was thick between them. Juliet had started shaking, almost rocking back and forth in her corner.

“Juliet?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Juliet’s voice was shaky, “I don’t know what to do.”

“What are you talking about?” Yuna kept her voice soft, quickly closing the bedroom door and rushing over to the bed.

“I-I keep having these th-thoughts and I’m so scared, Leyla.” The last half of her sentence came out more like a choked sob, her English just barely coming out. She had to admit the truth to herself, she’s scared. She’s scared of everything. Every year always seems to add on something worse to the last and she couldn’t take it anymore. She feels hurt, even when she’s not supposed to be. She doesn’t know what to do anymore and she’s afraid of the places her mind can take her.

Yuna’s eyes widened, she had called Yuna by her English name, something she was so sure the other girls had forgotten about. God, Yuna hadn’t heard that name in ages but in all honesty she loved hearing it again and it warmed her heart that Juliet had remembered, even that she had called her that.

She placed her hand on Juliet’s back, finding that she was freezing cold. Yuna was not expecting the face that had greeted her when Juliet looked up. Juliet’s face had been replaced by what looked like the shell of her once bright expression. Her eyes were deep-set and dark, her cheeks hollow and her skin so pale it almost looked like she was dead. Her mind raced as to what could’ve possibly got Juliet to this state, she always seemed so happy.

“It’s okay, this will pass.” She wasn’t sure exactly what to say in this situation, if Juliet’s talking about what she thinks she’s talking about.

“You don’t understand! It won’t!” Tears ran down Juliet’s face like it was nothing, she doesn't even notice them anymore. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? How many times I’ve repeated that to myself in hopes that it would come true?” She knows her anger is misplaced, Yuna’s just trying to help, but she can’t help it.

“I’m so tired, Leyla, I just want to go,” Juliet swallowed thickly, “I just want to go to bed and never wake up, I’m tired of living a life that I can’t enjoy.”

“Jules...” Juliet could almost hear the disappointment in her voice, just like everybody else she’s ever dared to tell this to. She drags her eyes away from Yuna’s and down at her duvet, she really didn’t want to know what Yuna was thinking.

“Can I just talk to you? Like just... just words, between us?”

Yuna nods, propping herself up on the bed, shivering as her back touched the cold wall. She pulled Juliet into her, if there was one thing she always knew to do it was to keep her close in her arms.

“Everyone has something they hate, right? Whether it be irrational or not.” Juliet fidgets in her seat, “I don’t know about everyone else but mine’s irrational, so irrational you’d probably think I was disgusting.”

Juliet could just tell Yuna’s chuckle was slightly forced, anyone would try and laugh in what felt like such an uncomfortable silence.

“It’s showering. I hate showering, it’s so... vulnerable and I can’t stand it.” Even she had to laugh just at how pathetic she sounded. “You know I try, I do, I can’t just not shower because that actually would be disgusting and that’s not what I want. It’s just that everytime I think I’m okay I go and have a shower and suddenly every bad thought I’ve ever had comes rushing back.”

Yuna can only nod in understanding.

“Ever since Lyra left I’ve had to drown out silence with anything, usually it would be music but some things I just can’t bear to listen to anymore and it sucks. It’s like everything that happened to her was my fault and I can’t handle it. I can’t be left alone anymore, I can’t and I know this. However, there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Her tears had stopped, instead her head was turned away from Yuna’s, resting against the wall and on top of her arm.

“I feel like whenever I’m around other people I bring destruction, y’know?”

“Oh that’s not true!” Yuna frowned.

“How would you know? No offence but you’ve only been in my life for like a year and a half and clearly you haven’t seen everything.” Juliet scoffs.

This would be the perfect time to tell her about what really happened last year but Juliet quickly decided that that would be another can of worms she’d rather not open. Not now.

“Well that’s gotta stand for something, I mean you haven’t hurt me and I don’t see you doing it in the future.” Yuna’s hopeful, Juliet’s glad that she is but she knows the truth — that she’ll always push those closest to her away until it’s far too late.

“And hey, if you can’t be alone then you don’t have to be!” She squeezed Juliet’s arm, “I’ll always stay by your side and if you get sick of me I can go but I’m always available!”

For the first time in a while Juliet smiled, she genuinely smiled. It was comforting to know Yuna wasn’t going to give up on her, she knew that any of her other members would probably give her the same sentiment but she’d known them for three years and they all had their own shit to deal with, none of them would ever really stick by her side at all times. Of course she had no way of knowing whether Yuna would live up to her words but through the year she’s known her she didn’t think she wouldn’t. Yuna seemed like the sweetest, even back when she watched her on Produce she was only nothing but nice to the other trainees, and she always looked a little lonely around the dorms, she didn’t even have a roommate which wasn’t exactly helpful when moving into a group of six other girls she didn’t know. It wouldn’t hurt for them to bond a little.

She stuck out her pinky finger, “Promise?”

“Promise.” Yuna grinned, locking her pinky into Juliet’s.