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shotosprincess · 3 years

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Altruistic. — oikawa tooru ♡︎

ALTRUISTIC: showing a disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others; unselfish.

⤷ pairing: oikawa tooru ♥︎ fem! reader

⤷ summary: you accidentally get hit by the ball during one of oikawa,, your childhood best friend’s ,, practice games ,, and he immediately leaves to take care of you 🥺🤌

⤷ genre(s): super short one shot w lots of fluff ,, fluff ,, FLUFF!!

⤷ length: 1.7k

⤷ a/n: PLS i stayed up till 6am last night writing this purely bc i absolutely could not sleep without writing a soft moment w oikawa into existence (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃

“ Oi! Oikawa! Pass it here! “ The holler echoed through the gym, roaring solidly over the squeak of worn out sneakers twisting against glossy floors.

“ Iwa-chan! “ Oikawa’s smile scintillates with an undeniable anticipation as he pushes against the ball, hands flicking outwards as his toss to the teammate in question proved to be, in fact, successful. He spikes it down, the tremendous force exerted from both parties sending the dull sphere of ivory driving into the ground, leaving their opponents in the blatant, dirty dust.

It smacks right in front of their libero, who was far too stunned to even do so much as react in time. The shrill of a whistle ripples through the air. Seijoh’s side cheers, little praises and compliments slipping out from one teammate to another as back pats and playful head slaps were shared within their brief moment of celebration. The boys prepare themselves for another point to be won, bending their knees in a ‘ ready ‘ stance. Your heart melted. Oikawa’s earthy eyes glinted with a familiar sense of hunger, of true passion. You loved seeing him like this; buzzing and thrumming with such a raw, precise determination. You adored it.

Your hand reaches into the shallow depths of your sweater’s pocket, findling with its contents before finally pulling out your phone to check the time. The serve is hit, and just as your finger sides across the side of the case to actually turn your phone on—

A blinding pain stuns you, striking sharply at the side of your head. You see white, passing out due to the sudden unpleasant sensation. Your body falls limp, lolling to the side of your chair upon impact.

Oikawa’s head snaps in your direction, and his heart stops. He waves a hand dismissively, aggressively, in fact, through the air, signalling some sort of time out for obvious reasons. His stare burned right through the spiker responsible for your unprecedented injury. A dark aura seemed to even envelope him as he did. And in a low, threatening tone:

“ You’ll pay for this. “

Rushedly sprinting to your side, he kneels beside you, cupping your neck with one hand for support and wrapping his other arm beneath your legs. He lifts you up gently, gaze frantically darting from side to side, only to realize that no paramedics of any sort were currently present. A scoff leaves him, sending one last protective glare towards the hazel-haired player.

“ Continue the game without me. I’m taking her home. “

There is a prolonged beat of silence until he leaves, and the gym slowly begins to erupt with laughter and boisterous comments once again. He carefully places you in his car, tucking your bag of belongings in the empty space beneath your feet. The jangling key turns and clicks, the engine booms to life.

And he’s off.

“ Are you...Are you ok? “

Your eyes flutter open, lids still heavy, to the blurred sight of a very pretty boy with a very pretty smile. Chestnut swoops of hair frame his face in a fluffy frame. There is a certain kindness in his eyes. That’s when everything comes rushing back to you, and you realize the pretty boy before you is none other than the man who has put up with you ever since the first grade, Oikawa Tooru. And judging by your surroundings, you were in...his room?

“ O-Oikawa? “

“ Hey, you’re awake. Just in time too. I need to clean your wound. “

The skin near his eyes creases ever so slightly as his lips form one of the warmest smiles you had ever seen. He seemed...relieved. By an almost-unnatural amount.

His fingers move to tuck a straying tendril of hair behind your ears, letting the back of his hand delicately brush against the side of your face.

“ What...what happened exactly? “

Your memory is hazy, all you remembered was a sudden searing sting, which only evolved into a copiously throbbing ache. And then nothing.

“ Yahaba was being an idiot and accidentally hit you in the head with his serve. “

He pushes the heel of his palm against his head, groaning into it in annoyance and frustration. You say nothing, simply making a little “ oh “ face. His eyes close, a deep inhale clearing his thoughts.

For some reason, your eyes were immediately drawn to the abundant rise of his chest. You did not know why.

He puts his hand down, flashing you a half smile.

“ Well. It can’t be helped. You were passed out on the ride back. You’re in my house right now, but don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, ok? No flying objects can hurt you here. “

The lighthearted laugh which follows is accompanied by an odd longing to keep looking into his eyes. He pulls out a small medical kit from the drawer behind him, presenting a ball of slightly frayed cotton. It clumps together as he saturates it with the contents of an alcohol agent, the blue liquid quickly bleeding into the white.

You instinctively wince as his tweezers take the ball between its thin metal prongs, gently pressing it against your head. A harsh sting pricks through your skin. Your eyes tightly squeeze shut, and your head drops down to hide your face, embarrassed. The pressure immediately ceases.

“ Sorry. I forgot to warn you when I was going to put it. “

“ No, no that’s alright! It just...took me by surprise, that’s all. “

You will yourself to muster up a reassuring smile, though the subtle quivering at the ends of your lips didn’t exactly make it very convincing.

Despite noticing this, his lips pursed together in an emphasized tightness and he nods, continuing the process. But this time around he’s more gentle with his movements, soft and cautious, so as to make it as painless as possible. His brows furrowed together in deep concentration, one almost comparable to the kind which he lost himself so many times in, whilst analyzing videos of volleyball games with that unmatched meticulous which you had always admired so.

Oikawa Tooru had rarely ever been one to be gentle, tender. Yet alas here he was, being as gentle with you as was humanly possible for him. It was confusing and addicting all the same. And if you thought about it enough, one could probably say that it was nothing short of a miracle, that very miracle being the cheesy, yet insatiable concept of love.

Once he finally lifts the cotton from your face, he disposes of the remains, chucking them casually into a nearby dustbin as it teeters back and forth a little with the force. He then takes out a small bandage, unfolding it with care. The precision he had acquired through volleyball was blatantly evident as he carefully spreads the sticky fabric atop your wound, effectively patching it up. A cool, almost healing, feeling hits said wound, and you couldn’t quite tell if it was purely because of the bandaid, or if it was because of the hands which placed it. His hands. Swept up completely in the dazed state he had you in, you decided on the latter.

Those same hands, which were whirling through the dreaminess of your thoughts, then cupped your face, turning your gaze towards him. A comforting, rather than cauterizing, warmth floods to your cheeks, flushing them with a vivid rose as your heart flutters vigorously with the sparks of a forming hearth. His eyes, brown as chestnuts stored away in hollowed trees, bore deeply into yours, with a sentiment you had never known. Without another thought, his lips silently press against your forehead. The top of his head rests against yours, careful not to touch the wound, neither one willing to let go of this moment.

Admittedly, you hadn’t ever quite expected Oikawa to be someone capable of such sentiment, nor had you ever thought that he would be the type of person to give up his game, and especially not for you. Sure, you were close, best friends even. But you knew better than anyone just how much he put into volleyball. He loved that game more than anything and anyone. That included you. Or at least that was what you had thought before now. It was almost shameful for you, in a way. You had always attached such a perception onto him, and sometimes it even made you envy him and his love for the sport.

Sometimes...sometimes you wished he loved you even half as much as he did volleyball.

But now...you didn’t know what changed, if something even had. Either way, you were seeing this completely different side to him which you had never even thought existed until now—a caring, altruistic Oikawa. Not the “ great king “, nor Seijoh’s number one. Just Oikawa. And though he most definitely was both of those things, he was also, apparently, selfless. Or at least as selfless as Oikawa could get. You knew how much gravity his games hold to him, so the fact that he gave it all up today just to take care of you...it truly was a shock.

His skin against yours was a salve within itself, yet it was the intrinsic tenderness in which he held you that really struck you as odd. Well, not necessarily odd, per say, but rather, different. And not in a bad way either. The absolute and utter timidness of the very gesture held something so...intimate between the two of you. It fanned the embers awakening in your heart, urging the orange specks to roar with breath. You’d only ever seen his rough, callous-littered hands hit roughly against the volleyball. It was always hit, hit, hit. When you were just little kids in elementary, you vividly remember walking by his nearby house everyday as you came home from school, only to hear the thumping of volleyballs against a wall as he practiced tirelessly to fulfill the dreams which he yearned so longingly for. Sometimes it would even stretch out into the late hours of the night. It astonished you, how one could commit so fervently to a sport.

And now here those same hands were, encasing your face within the unanticipated serenity of their touch, holding you with a rare tenderness. Tears of relief, of hope and of some other strong unknown feeling, gloss thickly over your eyes. He moves his thumb to wipe them away.

You liked this Oikawa. Sure, you loved the Oikawa who played rough and strategized with his team in such a laudable manner, but you also liked this side to him. The new, gentle side. This was an Oikawa you had never met before, and yet you already felt yourself falling in love, never to return.

And why would you?

#oikawa x reader #haikyuu fluff #oikawa x you #oikawa fic #oikawa scenarios #haikyuu oikawa #oikawa hcs #oikawa oneshot #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fic #oneshots #oikawa tooru #he’s so pretty

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aponderingcharming · 4 years

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We Have What We Have When We Have It - Part 2

Thanos has been defeated. Everyone is back. But Tony is gone, and so is Natasha. As Steve tries to come to terms with the loss, he discovers something that belonged to her. Read on AO3.

They had done it.

They had defeated Thanos.

But now they needed to clean up.

Clean-up operations were always messy, but Steve had never seen destruction like this.

Hundreds of people were scattered around the vast area gathering up the debris, building what looked to be endless mounds of broken pieces of what once was whilst trying to make sense of the chaos and sorting out what was left into some kind of order.

Steve watched on from the sidelines, almost glued to the spot as they worked, entranced as they divvied up bits of his life, feeling pretty lost.

Everyone who had been lost to the snap had come back and life was very slowly starting to return to whatever the new normal was going to be. Sure it was going to take a while to adjust to, well, everything but the atmosphere around the world was one of celebration and new hope.

He should have been celebrating, too. They had won, right? Families were reunited, friends back together again. And while bringing Bucky and Sam and Wanda back filled the void that had been aching inside of him since the second they disappeared, there was a new void now and this one felt different.

Stronger.

Worse.

After Tony’s funeral, Pepper had offered him a room to stay for a couple of days until he had to go and return the stones but most nights he found himself unable to sleep and ending up back at the remains of the headquarters, standing amongst the carnage, some part of him searching for answers in the chunks and shards of concrete and metal. Rubble spread out for what seemed like an eternity and any hope of finding anything that could connect him to himself, the person he was before all of this, was getting less and less as each day passed.

He’d lost his home.

Maybe it wasn’t his home for much of the last seven years or so, but it still held that place of belonging in his heart. It was the first place he had ever grown a sense of attachment to, the first place that lent itself a purpose to him. It was where they trained and forged relationships and built trust and carved out some sense of existence amid all of the madness that was their lives as Avengers.

It was where Natasha stayed when everyone else, including himself, left.

And now it had been reduced to nothing.

Just piles and piles of rooms and furniture and memories of now distant times.

And -

She was gone, too.

That he hadn’t fully dealt with yet either.

Part of him kept acting as if she was away on a mission or gone off the radar and she’d swoop in at any moment with an arched eyebrow, a sly smirk and some witty one-liner. Yet as the hours and days went by, the reality of it all was hitting him hard.

Losing Tony was worse than he could have ever imagined, especially when they had only recently mended their bridges, and him leaving behind Pepper and Morgan, sacrificing himself for the sake of everyone else, stirred up this burning in his chest that got more prominent as the time waged on.

But losing Nat?

Words didn’t exist for that kind of pain.

Nothing anyone could say or do - nothing he could say or do - could make it better.

Steve had experienced loss in so many ways – waking up seventy years later with everything and everyone you had ever known now reduced to another time had truly taken its toll on him and took many years to fully process and move on from – but this feeling, this grief that he was dealing with was overwhelming. It was like drowning; gasping for air, grappling for relief, yearning for a break – and it never coming. Instead, the pressure got worse, the pain more intense, the ache becoming almost a part of him now.

It consumed his every thought and action.

Natasha was the last thing he thought of when he did manage to fall asleep and she was the first thing he thought of when he woke. Throughout the day, the littlest things sparked memories of her and clips of their conversations whirled into his mind regularly. Sometimes he could relay them word for word and recall her exact facial expressions and tone of voice. He hoped he’d never forget that. Or anything else about her, like the way her eyes widened when he said something that took her by surprise; the slight parting of her lips when she didn’t know what to say; the eyebrow that somehow conveyed a million things at once; the smile that was only for him – soft and genuine, there but not quite there; the touch of her hand on his arm that was so anchoring and soothing at the same time; her lithe, graceful movement from years of ballet training; her impressive and frightening skill; her unmatched humour. He didn’t want to forget any of it.

He didn’t realize this kind of love existed. Sure, he had seen it among friends, had felt something akin to it with Peggy, but it wasn’t until now, when it was too late – again – that he knew that a deep love like this was real.

Why couldn’t he have recognized it sooner?

They knew their jobs were risky and putting your life on the line was practically in the job description, yet he thought that there would be this seemingly perfect time to tell her?

They were meant to get lives. And judging by their last conversation - if he could ever let himself actually believe it - lives with each other.

See you in a minute.

Oh how he wished he had said something back to her instead of offering that confident, half smile. He never knew a minute could last a lifetime.

So he stood there desperately watching as they disposed of the remnant of this chapter of his life, stuck in his what-ifs and daydreams, heart completely broken, and so unsure of what was next for him.

And then he heard a voice.

“Sorry, Captain?”

Steve batted away the tear that slipped down his cheek and turned to look at a young, plucky man that had made his way over to him at some point while he was away in his own mind.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you and I know it’s not much yet, but there’s a trailer over there that has a bunch of stuff that’s still in-tact if you want to have a look? Might be something of yours in there,” he said, pointing to his right at a trailer that was half-full of what looked to be just pieces of junk.

Steve nodded, hoping that the action appeared somewhat grateful. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to have to a look.”

The young man offered a timid smile and then moved to walk away but not before saying, “Thank you for bringing my parents back.”

A tiny smile forced itself to form on his face as he watched the man re-join the efforts.

They had won.

That was what Natasha wanted after all.

He just wished he could have told her.

With a deep breath and spying the trailer of junk, Steve ambled over to it, hands in pockets, a little sceptical that it would hold anything of real value. And to the naked eye, he was right. Somehow a bunch of picture-less photo frames had managed to survive. A couple of science books. A load of what looked to be computer accessories or parts – he wasn’t sure, really. A stool. An armchair. Some, but not a lot, of training gear. Nothing that seemed to be important.

Nevertheless, he reached over and in, moving things out of the way to have a look at what was underneath.

That’s when he found it.

It was a deep red, beat-up, scratched, metal box. It was small, couldn’t hold much of anything – maybe some papers or pictures. But he had never seen it before.

Gripping his two hands on the edge of the trailer, he hoisted himself up and then used one hand to steady himself whilst the other one grabbed the box. He landed back on his feet with a soft thud. It was lighter than he thought it would be and he raised it to the side of his head and shook it. Didn’t make much noise. He turned it upside down and all the way around for any indications on what it was or who owned it. A tiny padlock on the front danced around as he searched and came up short.

His brow furrowed deeper at the mystery as he held it out in front of him as though it would all become clear if he just looked at it harder. But there was nothing to find from its exterior; it had to be opened.

Something inside him pulsed, something that felt a little like a seedling of hope, that maybe, just maybe, this was Nat’s. It was a long-shot, he knew; she had never mentioned owning anything like this - or owning anything really. Due to their lifestyle, owning things kind of became pointless because they were always on the move, not sure if they were ever returning to where they were. They didn’t really have material things.

But there was always a possibility.

Aside from him, not many other people came to visit – so it had to have been hers, right?

Maybe.

With a parting look to what was once his home, Steve tucked the box under his arm and headed back to Pepper’s house.

When Steve reached the house, he could see that it was teeming with activity. Wanda and Sam were in the kitchen visibly at odds over what to make for breakfast, Bucky and Bruce were playing a game with Morgan that involved a lot of arms and legs and big grand gestures, and Pepper was keeping herself busy, tidying and moving all of Tony’s toys and equipment out of the living spaces piece-by-piece. Steve had offered on more than one occasion to help her in moving everything around but she had insisted that it was something that she needed to do for herself and by herself. And he respected that; grief showed up differently in people and the process was never a one-track road to recovery.

Unwilling to share what he had found at the site just yet, Steve headed over to the lake and sat down at the picnic table overlooking the view. It was a cloudy day, a little on the humid side, but it was still a beautiful picture. There was something so calming about the lakefront in all of its stillness and isolation. It was almost other-worldly in its distinct little spot just mere miles from the city.

He rested the box down in front of him and folded his arms on the table like he was waiting for it turn into something else and reveal its true nature.

Eyeing a small rock at his feet, Steve bent down and picked it up, tossing it around his fingers for a few seconds. He had absolutely no idea what to expect when he opened the box, but he knew that he had to find out. He struck the padlock with the rock and released a breath when it clinked onto the table. Then, he slid the box toward him and flipped open the lid with his thumbs.

There were folded pieces of paper inside – different colours and sizes, some looked to be ripped off a bigger sheet, others more formal looking, some like they were pulled from notebooks. A pen rolled down over them when he tilted it upward to have a closer look in. No pictures or indicators of what this was or to whom it belonged. Just what appeared to be a bunch of paper.

Steve scooped them all out in one go and placed them down as he pushed the box aside. The sheet that lay on top was folded over but had jagged edges as though it had been hastily torn out from a book, but yet on the bottom right-hand corner of it, ‘For SR’ was written in small but careful letters. He knit his eyebrows together at the discovery and then proceeded to check the other pieces of paper – all of which had ‘For SR’ written somewhere on their front.

SR.

Steve Rogers.

The man inhaled deeply, heart starting to beat that much quicker. He noticed that his hands were shaking as he lifted up the top sheet again.

Looking from left to right, making sure that he was completely alone, he swallowed hard and gave himself a number of seconds to settle. Though he still had no idea what any of this was, he felt like the moment, this moment, was significant.

He unfolded the paper.

It was a letter dated the day before they went on the time heist.

To him, from Natasha.

Hey Soldier,

Even though I can’t see you, I just know you’re doing that puppy-like frown thing that you do when you’re trying to solve a puzzle. (Steve, definitely making that face, immediately relaxed his expression.) Told you. (Okay, that required a grin.) I know what you’re thinking: ‘How did she know?’ but you see, Rogers, I think you’ll find that I know you pretty well. Maybe too well. I sometimes think I know you better than I know myself.

That’s why I started doing this. Writing letters. I remember all those times were you would chirp on about modern day communication and about how the sense of personal had been - what was it you said again? - totally removed? You were pretty resolute on that. It made for some really easy digs at your age. I mean seriously Rogers, sometimes I think you did it on purpose. (He could easily picture her then; leaning back against the headboard of her bed, notebook in hand, smirking as she wrote. God, what he wouldn’t do to see that smirk again. With a shake of his head, he willed himself to read on. Needing to read on.) And while I mostly found it kind of amusing to watch you grumble about all the differences between your era and ours – my personal favourite being pretty much anything to do with aliens; even after everything you’ve seen, watching you mouth the word ‘aliens’ like it was some entirely foreign concept for you always made me laugh (Despite being alone, Steve ducked his head in embarrassment, allowing himself the chance to imagine her low and raspy snicker, allowing himself to get lost in the sound) - there were parts that I do think we as a generation should have kept. Like this, for instance.

I started doing this after everything that went down after the Accords. After I realized that I had so much to lose. I feel like I didn’t truly know that until then. And I gotta say, Cap, there is something to this whole writing-down-your-thoughts-and-sending-them-to-people thing.

Not that I’ve ever sent or given these letters to you. They’re mainly just an outlet. A place for me to write out what I’m too afraid to say. (The blonde nestled in further then, leaning his two forearms onto the table.)

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. I hope you don’t because if you are reading this it means that I haven’t made it. (God those words…seeing them on paper made his heart thump with profound sadness. They were heavy on the sheet too, like she leaned that bit heavier with the pen, like it took all of her effort to get them down.) Most of the letters I’ve written just dive right into what was going on and what we were facing; they’re kind of like I’m just talking to you, sometimes getting deep and revealing but never so much that I feel like I’ve poured it all out. But I knew this one had to be different. Because this time, the time heist…it feels different.

I feel confident. I feel like we’re going to win. But I also feel like it won’t be easily won, that there’ll be compromises and challenges along the way and that we’ll face the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make. Whatever it takes, right? I think some old man told me that once. (Even in letters she couldn’t resist a jibe at his age and truth be told, he found it kind of warming. The jokes were a natural part of their relationship, zipping in when he least expected them but still amusing him nonetheless. He let out a sigh though, knowing that he’d never hear one from her ever again.)

We will win, Steve. I can feel it.

But I also feel like I need to say what I have to say. Or, well, write it down, I guess. I can’t put my finger on it but this time I feel like I need to release it. Maybe it’s just for me, I don’t know. God, I wish I was brave enough to say it to you and watch your face go through hundreds of different expressions in the space of a few seconds and watch as your body tenses in that cute, shy way that’s so funny to me because you’re Captain America and you’re not intimidated by any threat but when it comes to women you instantly retreat back to that kid from Brooklyn. And I find it endearing. There, I said it. So don’t go beating yourself up over it; embrace it. It’s just another reason as to why you’re the greatest guy, Steve.

(It felt as though she paused there, the words holding so much weight even in their written state. He imagined she was working her bottom lip between her teeth as she deliberated what to say next, the slightest of furrows in her brow.)

Still with me? (“Yeah,” Steve answered aloud, swallowing hard.) I can practically hear you say yes. I bet you did, didn’t you? (A huff of laughter escaped through his nose. She really did know him. For a second, he placed the sheet down and drew in a number of long, deep breaths. He wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but he had a feeling that it was going to change everything for him.)

I really hope I get the chance to say this to you in person. Maybe I’ll do it after the heist. I mean, what am I waiting for anymore? I think I’ve waited long enough. I think you have too. You’re always waiting for something, aren’t you? I’m sorry I’m so bad at all this and I’ve kept you waiting literal years.

I feel like as time went on there was a shift in our relationship. And I think I knew it even before everything with Ultron but I never let myself think about it for too long. It scared me. I guess I didn’t understand what I was feeling because I had never felt this kind of feeling before. It was strange and new and frightening and so I pushed it to the side, kept on marching on beside you, keeping you at arm’s length even though we both know that it became harder to define the boundaries between us as the years went by. But by doing this I was able to sort through these feelings and figure out what was going on with me. Being vulnerable doesn’t come easy to me – shocker, I know. Turns out there is something I’m not good at. Just don’t tell anybody else.

So…okay, here it goes. The truth is: you’re the most important person in my life. The thought of you not being by my side through all of this…I can’t even imagine – I don’t want to ever imagine.

(Against his will, a small tear escaped his eye and snaked down his cheek. God, he didn’t ever want to do this without her either; when he truly thought about it, she was the only thing keeping him going. And now? Now she was gone. And it was so much worse than he could have ever imagined.)

I love you, Steve.

And I honestly don’t know what that looks like for us or what that could even be with the lives we lead, but I do. I really do. I think I have for a long time.

I was always taught that love was for children and I think for the most part of my life I believed that enough to be able to do what I do. But after The Avengers, I started to see the value in having friends and people who you could call family – and slowly I started to let the beginnings of love in. But with you…I can’t explain it but I know that I have never felt this way before. I feel like I subconsciously gravitate toward you when you’re nearby because I just want be around you; I care about your opinion; I want to pick you up when you feel low; I love talking to you and learning all of your mannerisms and listening to your stories form your childhood. I love the way you fight for everyone. I love the way you selflessly and tirelessly give of yourself to try to make the world the best version of itself. You make me want to be a better person. You showed me that I am a better person than I give myself credit for. No one has ever done that for me. No one has ever made me feel worthy. And in those five years after the snap, after we lost so much and I felt like I was drowning, you would just show up, like you just knew that I needed someone, a safe place to land. I like to think I became that source of safety for you then, too.

(Steve fought back the urge to fold the letter up and lock it away back in that box so that he didn’t have to see those words or hear her voice saying them with that soft tone she only ever really used for him. He could go about his life pretending that this declaration didn’t exist. Move on and get a new life, one that would make her proud. Because this? Somehow knowing that she cared for him in the same way he did for her made everything so much worse. He could never tell her that he loved her, could never validate her feelings. They could never have what they each wanted. “Damn it, Nat,” he cursed, smacking the table with his fist just to relieve some of the frustration that had crept up inside of him. Barring his teeth and setting his jaw to keep his emotion in check, he forced himself to keep going because he at least owed her that.)

Thank you for staying with me through all those times when I couldn’t bring myself to be anything to anyone. For the late night conversations; the brief moments of laughter. For being the constant in this strange world we find ourselves in. I don’t think I could ever truly convey how thankful I am that you never left me. Even when I wanted to leave me.

And thank you for taking the time to really see me. To look past all the stuff I put in the way and learn about the real me. You never shy away from my past, always willing to listen when something gets too much for me, but you also never pry or push, and you have never once judged me for who I was. I think that means more to me than you’ll ever know.

I don’t know if you feel the same way but deep down I think you do. The way you look at me sometimes…it’s like – I don’t know, it makes me feel seen. Or…whole, maybe? Like I’m enough. And you know me, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like I am enough for anything. I never felt like I belonged to this world, to this time, and I think on some level I understood you and what you felt when you woke up after the ice. Obviously not in the ‘waking up 70 years into the future’ kind of way but…I was always chasing absolution for my past, trying to be better and do better and make a difference; you were always chasing purpose in your future, trying to be better and do better and make a difference. And somehow in the middle of all that we forged a relationship that remained through all of the ups and downs and time-travel and aliens and egotistical demi-gods and talking space raccoons.

You’re never going to see this anyway so I’m gonna write it down one more time just for myself and just because it actually feels good to see it on paper:

I love you, Steve.

If you’re finding out this way I’m so sorry. I hope that I get to say it to you someday. I hope you feel the same.

And if you have that crooked smile on your face – you know the one – you can scrub it off your face now. I mean it, Rogers; don’t let it get into your head!

Now let’s go win this time heist and get everyone back so we can get lives.

Nat

Each word, each declaration was like a punch to the stomach and Steve raised his head to look out at the quiet scene ahead of him, a scene he thought of as soothing a few minutes previous now appearing desolate and lonely. The ache, the tightness, the tension in his chest expanded and then constricted, expanded and constricted, expanded and constricted like it didn’t know what it wanted to do and all he could feel was pain and loss. Tears came more abundantly now, more urgent and hot. So much so that he couldn’t even see the page anymore. He buried his face into the crook of his shoulder, squeezing his eyes so tight that when he did try to open them, he could see nothing but bright spots of colour.

Natasha had loved him.

And now she was gone.

And she didn’t know that he loved her back.

What was he supposed to do now?

#romanogers #stevenat #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #steve x natasha #capwidow #captain america #black widow #captain america x black widow #romanogers fic #avengers #avengers fanfic #mcu

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amethystunarmed · 3 years

Text

Is Heavy, So Few Men Can Carry It

Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Dabi/Hawks

Warnings: Manga Spoilers, Implied Child Abuse

Word Count: 2278

Part of the Truth Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

AO3 Link (Links will be added in a reblog)

~~~~~

Koharu Mukai more or less enjoyed being an EMT. Her quirk was certainly suited for it. The ability to see heartbeats through even dense piles of rubble certainly came in handy during earthquakes and large scale building destruction. It helped in grimmer situations too, like letting her know when there’s no need to rush at the scene of a car crash. Those days were the worst. Sometimes, she had nightmares about silent cityscapes where she can’t see a heartbeat at all.

Where she’s utterly alone.

Maybe that’s part of what influenced her career decisions. When Koharu’s quirk first manifested, her parents had nudged her to the life of a hero. It was never anything overt, never openly stated, but Koharu knew. They weren’t exactly subtle. They entered her into judo lessons the moment she could walk, gushed when rescue heroes like Thirteen and Uwabami were on the news. During her last year of middle school, a brochure for UA appeared on her desk. Again, not subtle.

But... Koharu didn’t want to be a hero. Didn’t want to fight and train for combat with villains. Didn’t want to risk seeing those heartbeats stutter out as a result of her actions.

But she did want to save people.

So, she trained to be an EMT, and she was a damn good one too. And she loved it, she really did.

Except for when it came to dealing with heroes.

Koharu couldn’t say she didn’t get it. Ranking was everything for heroes, and more than half of it relied on reputation and public opinion. She had witnessed a hero from her hometown drop thirty spots in rank after a reporter broadcast him being taken away in an ambulance.

She got it.

But it didn’t mean they needed to be such assholes about it. Attempting to treat a hero after a fight could get you scolded like a child at best, and reported on as incompetent by the media at worst. One of her friends had tried to bandage a seven-inch gash on Endeavor’s arm, and ended up with second degree burns on her hands. So when she pulled the short straw and was sent to look over Hawks, she only really felt a pang of resigned dread.

Honestly, she’d heard good things about Hawks. Every EMT who spoke of him recounted him as polite, cheerful, and actually willing to comply with basic check-ups. Koharu finds all of this to be true. He obeys her every request, even as he repeatedly checked the time on his phone. He starts anxiously tapping his foot, and she takes pity on him.

“You seem alright, Hawks,” Koharu says, as she finishes checking for a concussion. “Not even a scrape.” She’d be surprised at the lack of injuries if she hadn’t seen the current state of the villains. All nine completely immobilized and unharmed. After treating some of the perps Endeavor has brought in, she’s honestly surprised Hawks isn’t Number One. His care and efficiency are unmatched. “Anything else happen that I should know about?”

“I mean, I think one of the villains hit me with her quirk,” he says with no regard to how worrying that statement is. He blinks and startles, almost as though coming back to himself. He looks at her with a large smile, but she can see his heartbeat kickstart with adrenaline. “But it didn’t do anything, I feel perfectly fine.”

Bullshit.

Still maybe she can coax him into actually taking care of himself.

“Even so, it would be best for you to go to the hospital. We can monitor you for any changes.” His smile widens but she sees his eye twitch with annoyance. She holds back a groan and waits for the meaningless platitudes to begin.

“I’m not allowed to go to the hospital.”

Koharu has to admit, her jaw drops. All the training classes, all the years experience, everything she’s ever learned just flies out of her head.

She stares at him, silently, like an idiot.

“I r-really need to go,” Hawks stammers. He looks scared. He looks like he’s about to cry. And suddenly, Koharu remembers that Hawks is a couple years younger than her baby sister. “I just broke like, 8 NDAs by telling you that.”

He’s trying to get away from her, she can see his wings flapping. He is biting his lip, hard, like he is trying to keep himself quiet.

Koharu remembers the words of one of the officers first on the scene. He’d told her to stay away from one of the villains, because of her quirk...

Her eyes widen. She reaches forward to Hawks, unsure if touch will calm him, or just make him more upset. Given the way he flinches, she guesses the latter. She keeps her words calm and level, trying to ease his rapidly increasing heartbeat.

“Hawks, one of the villains is registered as having a truth quirk. I think you’ve been affected–”

“I have to go,” Hawks yells, so loudly it startles her, “I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed.”

Koharu gasps, body nearly going limp in shock.

Why would something like this put her in danger?

Could this endanger her family?

What is happening?

By the time she thinks to ask, Hawks is soaring far above her. She watches until the skyline swallows him.

~~~~~

That night, when she gets home, Aimi is waiting for her. Her eyes light up when Koharu enters, but freeze over when she registers Koharu’s expression. Koharu longs to give in and tell her everything, let go of the terrible knowledge bubbling inside her. She opens her mouth to speak and chokes. I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed. She clamps her jaw shut and launches herself forward into Aimi’s arms, and muffles her sobs in her chest. To Aimi’s credit, she never tries to ask what happened. She only strokes Koharu’s hair and hums.

~~~~~

That night, long after her wife had fallen asleep on her chest, Koharu lay awake, staring at nonsense pictures in the ceiling spackle. She thinks of that strange admission—I’m not allowed to go to the hospital—and ponders endlessly of what he could have possibly meant in fractal conspiracy theories. Over and over again, she hears his panicked stammers, those words—I’m terrified of telling you something that will get you killed—echoed around her. He had looked at her with the same terror held by those in the midst of a disaster; the horrific certainty of life crashing down around you.

I should have done something.

I should have said something.

But she hadn’t. And even now, she cannot fathom what would have been the right words to say. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

The after-image of his frantic heart beats against her eyelids.

~~~~~

Two days later, in the hospital lobby, she spots a TV news report about the disappearance of the Number Two Hero, Hawks. She drops a stack of forms and they coat the hallway floor like snowfall.

~~~~~

Later that week, Koharu is called into the office of the Hero Public Safety Commission. They didn’t tell her what for, but she knew. Considering the timeline the news had constructed, Koharu would have been one of the last people to see Hawks before his disappearance, if not the last. Though Koharu can’t help but wonder what they could possibly expect her to know. Furthermore, she has no idea what to do with what she does know.

Aimi is nervous. She continually fidgets with the hem of the suit jacket Koharu hasn’t worn since her last job interview. She claims she is just straightening it, but each touch of the fabric evolves into a hand around her waist, a brush against her wrist. Aimi is touching her like she is saying goodbye. Koharu kisses her gently, attempting to comfort her, but can’t help but wonder if she will disappear too.

~~~~~

The office of the Hero Commission Director is blank, white, and boring. The photos on the wall are close ups of calla lilies Koharu expects were in the frames in the store. The desk is black, with stainless steel dressings, and is wide enough that Koharu feels the urge to shout so the Director can hear her. The room makes her feel small, like an outsider, and Koharu can’t help but wonder if that was the goal when the Director smiles at her.

“Welcome, Mukai-san, thank you for coming in,” she says, and Koharu robotically complies.

“H-Hello,” she stutters, and curses herself. The Director chuckles, though not unkindly.

“No need to be so nervous,” she assures. “I just want to know if Hawks said anything to you before he left the scene that day, or if you can recall anything out of the ordinary. You’re not in any trouble.”

“Sorry,” she says, “I just... didn’t expect to meet with you. I thought an assistant would take my statement, or something.”

The Director purses her lips, and looks at her with mournful eyes. “We took Hawks in when he was no more than a toddler,” she tells her, voice heavy with nostalgic grief. “I helped raise him. So of course, I am doing everything in my power to find him.” She reaches forward, takes Koharu's hand in his own, like a man begging for a pardon. “So please, tell me, do you remember anything from that day that could help us find him?”

She remembers I’m not allowed to go to the hospital.

She remembers the way Hawks cowered from her raised hand.

She remembers his heartbeat.

“No,” she tells him, “Nothing.”

~~~~~

Weeks pass. The Commission doesn’t reach out to her again. She breathes a sigh of relief and puts the whole business out of her mind. (Every night she lies awake and hopes that Hawks isn’t found.)

The next time she sees Hawks, he’s on the news.

It was after her shift. For the first time in weeks, she’d agreed to join the rest of her squad at a local bar for some beers. The night had been going better than she expected, at least, until the bulletin happened.

“Breaking News,” The anchor said, nervous voice a poor attempt at remaining neutral, “Former Number Two Hero Hawks has teamed up with the League of Villains in an ongoing heist.” Gasps filled the bar, including Koharu’s own. Someone turned off the music, with the report acting as their only soundtrack. They cut to video of the attack. It was blurry, taken on a phone by someone who absolutely should have been running away, but that is not why Koharu nearly doesn’t recognize him.

Hawks is different. Feathers sprout from his hair and trail down to the nape of his neck. His hands are uncovered, and spout deadly claws. He’s bare-foot, so she can see just how inhuman his legs are, clearly meant to perch and kill. She’s certain the talons on them are at least the size of her hand.

Despite all this, the strangest sight is his expression. Koharu had seen Hawks smile. Honestly, between the TV interviews and billboard ads, it was hard not to. Hawks was known for lighting up the room, making girls literally scream with his dashing looks. Hawks’s smile is like the sunset, constant yet endlessly alluring.

But Koharu realizes, as she watches him grin as he carries the scarred villain from a burning roof, she has never seen Hawks happy until just this moment.

The people in the bar are screaming with anger and betrayal. Someone throws a beer bottle and it shatters against the TV.

On screen, Hawks croons, and nuzzles his cheek with the man he’s carrying, and something in Koharu’s chest shatters.

Tears drip down her cheeks, and though she is not the only one crying, she is alone in her sobs of joy.

“Fly,” she whispers, words trampled by the jeers and wails of the crowd. “Go far from this place.”

And though he cannot hear her, Hawks sails away, far out of reach.

She does not need to see his heart to know it beats free.

#dabihawks #bnha #my hero academia #bnha hawks #mha #bnha dabi #bnha fanfic #boku no hero academia #hotwings #my bnha fanfic #My writing #the truth series #my fanfic

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

Text

Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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