we'll always have Paris II Élisa de Almeida x GERWNT! Reader
masterlist I word count: 1292
a/n: hi, this oneshot was requested, to the one who sent it in, sorry that it took so long.
It was France versus Germany in the half final of the Women’s Nations League. In this match you were playing against a lot of your teammates but also your girlfriend from Paris Saint-Germany. Each team just had finished singing their national hymns, so it was time for you to shake the hands of your opponents.
“Ohh, your amour is starting to walk to us.”, Laura Freigang who was standing right before you in line, turned her face to comment with a huge smirk on her lips. Much to your own annoyance Sydney Lohmann made kissing noises to highlight the Eintracht Frankfurt players observation.
“Shut it, Lau and Syd.”, you rolled your eyes at them before turning your attention to your girlfriend who was about to take your hands in hers.
“Salut, Élisa.”
“Salut.”, Élisa greeted you accompanied with a boyish wink.
“I’m going to puke!”, Laura who was bad at staying quiet for too long exclaimed jokingly.
“Don’t forget you play for our side because of that French charmer.”, Sydney reminded you grinning.
“I’ll never forget that.”, you replied sincerely.
“They think you’re that unprofessional?”, your girlfriend rose her eyebrows in surprise.
Clearing your throat, you told her:” Get to your position De Almeida. We’re here to play.”
“Whatever you say, mon amour. I’ll make sure to lift my shirt enough times to distract you with my abs.”, she smiled cheekily at you.
“That won’t work, ma chéri.”, you answered confidently.
“We’ll see about that.”
“Good, luck babe.”, you said before you both turned to your starting position on the pitch waiting for the referee to start the match.
During the game, it was still 0:0 at that time, Sara Doorsoun whispered amused into your ear:” Y/n, the abs of your girlfriend, she’s kind of hot.”
“Stop it, Sara and please stay focused.”, you replied laughing.
“I’m focused.”, the older defender stated.
“Good.”, you nodded satisfied.
“But not bad.”
“Sara!”, you yelled at her.
“Just saying.”, she responded sheepishly smiling.
Secretly, you knew that your teammate was right about your girlfriend, but this was an important game and you always wanted to win even if it was against Élisa. Unfortunately, the football match went in favour of the hosts and Germany lost 2:0.
Exhausted you fell onto your knees after the final whistle of the referee. “We lost.”, you muttered more to yourself than to anyone in particular.
“Shit. You still had a good game.”, Laura tried to cheer you up and padded your shoulder encouragingly.
“And don’t forget we’ve another game to qualify for the Olympics.”, Sydney added.
“Yeah, let’s beat the Netherlands.”, Lena Oberdorf sounded motivated.
“Against Jackies team.”, you remarked, the blonde Dutch was one of yours and your girlfriend closest friends in Paris.
Deep in your own thoughts you didn’t hear Élisa coming, only until she spoke directly to you:” You’ll win the next game.”
“Congrats to your win.”, you mumbled.
The French defender thanked you as she helped to lift you from the ground, so you both could look into each other’s eyes.
You swallowed hard, trying to hide your own disappointment: “You played really great.“
“So did you.“, Élisa replied. Her face was serious. Evidence that she actually meant it and wasn’t just trying to cheer you up.
“That’s what Laura said to.“, you told her.
A small smile appeared on your girlfriends face. With a wink, she reached out and tilted your head upwards with her fingers under your chin: “She didn’t lie to you. Now come on, chin up. You’ll win the next game and qualify for the Olympics.“
“Hopefully.“, you sighed. Your girlfriends optimism was lost on you.
“Also, remember, we’ll always have Paris.“, Élisa grinned, quoting the famous line from the movie Casablanca.
You involuntarily snorted about her dumb joke. “Okay, Humphrey Bogart, I’d like my girlfriend back who gives me a hug and a kiss to make up for this loss.“
Élisa looked at you with a smirk: “A hug and a kiss, huh?“
“Yes. You know, we still have a few days in camp left until we’re back in Paris.“, you said, blinking at her with big innocent eyes.
“And you can’t wait for that long.“, your girlfriend concluded.
“No but if you can, I have to join my team now.“ You pointed over your shoulder where Sydney impatiently bounced on her feet and Laura mimed looking at an invisible watch.
“Okay, come here. One quick kiss.“, Élisa smiled and pulled you close.
You quickly pressed your lips to hers while wrapping your arms around her waist.
“See you in Paris.“, you whispered as you pulled apart.
Lena passed the two of you and grimaced in disgust: “Okay, enough hugs and kisses from the wrong team.“
“Obi, you’re awful!“, you laughed.
Still, you gave your girlfriend one last hug goodbye before following your team mate to the rest of the team.
Sydney determinedly shook her head: “No, she did the right thing.“
You were used to their teasing by now so you only rolled your eyes fondly: “If you girls say so.“
“We do!“, Laura said with emphasis.
You smiled. This team was really something very different than Paris Saint-Germain.
Your second game was against the Netherlands. Whoever won this game would be qualified for the Olympics. The stakes were high and everyone knew it. But your team put on a brilliant performance, beating the Oranje Leeuwinnen with 2:0.
After extensive celebrations the night of the game, you arrived at your apartment in Paris on the next day.
“Hi, I’m home!“, you called, letting your suitcase drop right on the floor. You were still exhilarated from the win.
Élisa appeared from the kitchen: “Hi.“
You crossed the distance to her quickly and jumped right into her arms: “We’re going to the Olympics!“
Laughing, she tried to hold her balance: “I know, I’m so happy for you.“
“Poor Jackie though remind me to invite her to dinner soon.”, you sighed empathetically.
“She’ll be fine, trust me. That’s football. You win some, you lose some. No one should know that better than you.”, the defender reminded you while carrying you to the sofa to place you down on it.
“Yes, it was really a rollercoaster ride.”, you admitted as your girlfriend sat down next to you.
“But with a happy ending.”, Élisa grinned at you.
“Right.”, you nodded enthusiastically.
“Can’t wait to go to Paris with you.”, she muttered.
“Actually, that’s great, we’re already there.”, you joked laughing.
“I meant at the final of the Olympics and you know that.”, the French player corrected you.
Her mentioning the end game made your cheeks turn hot: “I know but I couldn’t resist.”
“The qualification clearly has gotten to your head.”, Élisa teased you.
Swiftly you changed the topic away from football: “So, what should we do now?”
“Oh, I have a few ideas.”, the dark-haired woman answered with a dirty smile on her lips.
“Does this involve the bedroom?”, you asked her cheekily.
“Absolutely.”
“I like that a lot.”, you confessed. The weeks away from each other due to national team duties always made you hungry for your lover’s touch, you could feel the sexual tension rise in air.
“Follow me then.”, Élisa said, holding her hand up for you to grasp it before leading you to your shared bedroom. Seeing the bottle of red wine on the nightstand and the rose petals on the bed send you thrills of excitement through your body.
You might have lost against her in the nations league game, but you knew you won her heart as you followed her to bed, awaiting the kisses and touches you both have missed. Knowing deep inside that Paris and the women you loved were always worth coming back to.
Pictures are from pinterest.
118 notes
·
View notes
White settler institutional support of Israel — such as that of the University of California — points to two historical contexts. The first is the history of the formation of the Israeli settler state, since 1948 and before and after, its expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes, its depopulation of over 400 Palestinian villages, and its ongoing attacks against Palestinian individuals, communities, and institutions, including, as the Palestinian poet and translator Fady Joudah has observed, Palestinian memory. All of this is ignored by political and educational leaders in the United States in the interest of the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the subjection of Palestinians to settler obliteration.
The attachment of these institutions and leaders to the Israeli state points to a second context: the racialization of social understanding among white settler individuals, institutions, and collectives, and an identification of individuals, institutions, and collectives with white settler life, self-understanding, and social sense. The affirmation of Israeli acts of genocidal violence as self-defense is not only a grotesque distortion. It points to a social truth: that the social form of the American settler state foments an identification with settler ways of being—with white settler life and social existence—through which individuals, collectives, and institutions understand themselves and in relation to which the world becomes legible for them as a space for life.
This identification suggests a third context: the ongoing attempts to domesticate the struggles for decolonization following World War II in the institution of the modern state and the modern terms for the law. These include the basic terms through which the social is understood, terms such as the “individual,” “right,” “property,” and “whiteness,” which sustain the law and which the law reinforces. It is not only that Palestinians are a non-white, non-European people struggling for liberation and freedom against a settler colonial oppressor—and this is the case—but that their struggle, in whichever form it takes, conjures a panic in white life and settler being, a fantasy, as the anti-colonial militant and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961, of “swarming” and “gesticulating” Black and Brown beings, against whom the settler colonial state sets its police, military, and pedagogical forces.
It is in this context that we must understand the many attacks against Palestinian academics and intellectuals, such as Nadia Abu El Haj, the author of a pathbreaking book on Israeli archaeology and its relation to colonization; the attacks against psychoanalysts, such as Lara Sheehi, who has brilliantly studied the links among settler colonialism and psychoanalysis; the attacks against the Palestinian novelist, essayist, intellectual, and teacher Adania Shibli, whose receipt the LiBeraturpreis at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 20 has been unjustly delayed; the attacks against the Palestine Writes conference, a gathering of Palestinian writers, activists, intellectuals, and artists held from September 22-24 at the University of Pennsylvania and “dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists.” The desire to prevent Palestinians from publicly and collectively celebrating their literary, artistic, poetic, and cultural productions is a social and psychical assertion of and an identification with a mode of being and life: a form of life that one might call “settler life” in all of its whiteness and in all of its attachment to the state and the law, and in its racialized, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous social sense and ongoing counterinsurgent and carceral practice. [x]
- jeffrey sacks for mondoweiss on october 18, 2023
54 notes
·
View notes