#this is maybe from the spanish version | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

samkerrworshipper · 17 days

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las 15.

mapi leon x reader, alexia putellas x reader (platonic)

warnings: the spanish federation ick

erm look at me posting something 😮 anyways enjoy haha i kinda hate it but need to feed yall somehow

“You need to be aware of the consequences of what could happen if you sign this document.”

You stared down at the mahogany surface of your lawyers desk, it was dark, sanded, smooth and shiny. Contemporary, but it also looked old, like a heirloom. It distracted your from the non stop drawl.

“I don’t care, I’m signing it.”

Your eyes travelled along the surface, lookinbg at the different waves of wood and the way that the dark colours marbled together.

“The RFEF could come for you, they could try and take your license. You might not compete at the world cup, the press will come for you, Vilda will come for you, Barca could reduce your playing time, it could be the end of your career. There are other negatives.”

You’ve thought about all of them of course, how could you not?

“I’ve already said it, I don’t care. Let them come for me, let them do whatever they want. I am done with it all. Fourteen other players have signed it, no? I will be the fifteenth and that is final.”

You weren’t a big fan of your lawyer, he was old and money oriented. He also didn’t have your best interest in mind, his sole focus was earning you as much money as possible, which had been fine up until today.

“So what? You plan to be the best in the world and never play international football again? This will ruin your career, it will put an end to the Ballon D’or campaign, it will change things for you, you can’t just do this because your girlfriend does it as well, this will be detrimental for you.”

The wood grooved at the edges, flattening out and curving so the edges weren’t too sharp.

“I refuse to stand by and submit myself to abuse. That’s what happens every time I go to that place, every time I go to camp I submit myself to abuse, torture, horrific conditions. The fact that you would even dare imply that I would do this for anybody but myself is preposterous. I am better than the condition I am being subkmitted to, I deserve better than to be objectified and treated as if I am dirt on that man’s shoe and I refuse to be treated as such. I have standards for myself and the people around me and I refuse to live by these for much longer. I’ll draft up the letter, I’ll send it to you for editing purposes and once your done you will send it to the RFEF, consequences be damned. You should be glad that I lasted two more windows then everyone else, honestly I’m ashamed that I didn’t do this earlier, but I’m ready to take a stand with everybody else now. I don’t want to play in a World Cup if it means this is how I will live my life.”

You looked up at your lawyer, hoping the fire burning in your soul was reflective in your eyes.

“This is a bad decision, you are thinking with your heart and not your head, this is unlike you.”

You pulled your eyes from the mahogany, standing up from your seat slowly.

“No, I’m thinking with my own interests, not yours, not my managers, not my bank accounts. I’m thinking with my mental health, my emotional health and my physical health. For the first time in my life I am taking time to focus on myself, so tyeah maybe it’s unlike me, but I’d like to think this might be the a better version of me, I’ll email you my letter, all you havr to do is forward it, if it’s such a struggle don’t even bother reading it, I don’t care what you have to say, I’m legally obligated to make you aware of any contractual issues so here I am. Give a fuck, don’t give a fuck, it doesn’t change anything for me, I’ve made my decision and nothing or nobody will make me change my mind.”

You didn’t wait around to hear what he planned to say in rebuttal, exiting the stuffy office as quickly as your legs would allow.

You made it to your car before you felt the tears flooding down your face. Even now, even after you’d tried to speak out you still felt like you were being silenced, like nothing had changed. That’s why you were doing what you were doing, why you knew this was what you needed to do. It didn’t make it any easier though, knowing that no matter what choices you made, even if they were for the good of you there were still going to be people around you who condemned them.

You were supposed to be at training, but you’d taken the day of to finalise all this bullshit. It was frustrating, knowing that the choices you were making for the good of yourself could end up being harmful to your career in a multitude of ways, it was all so fucking hard.

Everybody was at training, and yet here you were balling your eyes out in the carpark of your stupid fucking lawyers office.

If you hadn’t hit rock bottom at the last camp, the this was it, this was your final straw.

It was all too much, you’d been holding out for too long, but the mixture of the other 14 girls refusing to come back and Alexia’s injury had been enough of a motivation for Vilda to try and ruin your life. It had started with extra training after your sessions, then sessions in the mornings, then separating you from the rest of the team, limiting your diet, gym sessions, changing your schedules to everybody elses, punishing you for nothing, treating you like you were a slave to the Spanish Women’s team.

You were the best midfielder they had, excluding Alexia, and she was hurt, you were the scapegoat for the team, you were responsible for the wins and the reason for the losses.

You knew that with your leave, somebody else would end up taking your role, probably Aitana who was far to young to deal with that kind of pain, and you felt bad, you felt more guilty than you thought possible, but you couldnt do it for any longer, you couldn’t act like it wasn’t killing you on the inside for every second that you spent away with those people.

You hated it, you hated feeling like nothing, you hated feeling worthless, you hated living your life like it was pointless, you couldn’t do it for any longer, not when you were giving up every single part of yourself to keep yourself together.

You couldn’t stay how you were, crying in the drivers seat of your car milling over the memories of your last camp, you needed to leave, needed to go somewhere, needed to talk somebody.

Before you really knew what you were doing you’d started driving, letting the tears drip onto your lap and the steering wheel as you frantically drove your way through the city.

You couldn’t be alone, but you also couldn’t handle all the eyes of your teammates, so you drove to the one other place that you could think of where you hoped somebody would be.

You tried your hardest to wipe the tears from your face, but they kept falling, the sleeve of your shirt getting damper by the second as you tried to wipe up the evidence of your breakdown. It was useless, and eventually you gave up, stepping out of your car and ducking your head as you walked towards the lift and navigated your way through the apartment building.

The person you were looking for didn’t answer the door, instead you were put face to face with Olga.

“Hola chica, Ale didn’t tell me she was expecting visitors.”

You bit down on your lip, tapping your foot against the floor as you peeked around Olga, searching for the person you were seeking out.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t tell her, I can go home, I know she’s been busy with her rehab, I don’t even know how I ended up here.”

Olga tugged at your arm before you could spit anything else out, tugging you through the door and closing it from behind you.

“Nonsense chica, you’re very welcome here, Alexia is sitting out on the balcony doing her exercises, she’ll be more than happy to have your company, just head on through, your always welcome here.”

You nodded at Olga, smiling at her as much as you could with your lip still stuck between your teeth.

“Thank you, thank you so much, I really appreciate.”

You tried to ignore the tears that were still dripping down your face, it didn’t feel like you were crying, even though you were, it more felt like you were shedding a layer of yourself, the layer that was holding all of the trauma that you’d been holding in, like it was your way of getting rid of it all.

Alexia’s apartment was meticulously clean as ever, but you spotted her out in the sun easily.

She was standing outside, in a pose similar to ones you did in your yoga sessions.

She looked at peace, like she was calm, like she was serene, the complete polar opposite to how you felt and you really didn’t want to burden her with your problems, but you were here now anyways.

You tiptoed over to the glass sliding door, pushing it open, causing Alexia’s head to peak up at you. She looks at you with curiosity, but doesn;t move, instead her head nods you towards one of the outdoor lounges beside her, which you beeline for.

She stays in her position as she addresses you.

“The appointment with your lawyer didn’t go well then?”

You did a double take as you stared at Alexia, shocked at the information she’d somehow managed to obtain.

“You don’t take me for a idiota do you? Mapi told me you had a appointment you were keeping quiet about this morning, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out who it must have been with, considering recent events. Although your girlfriend wasn’t smart enough to work it out herself.”

Alexia stayed in her stretch, looking at you as if to prompt you to tell her more.

“Yes, I had a appointment with my lawyer, Alexia.”

Alexia smirked to herself, she was one of the most obersvanet people you knew, nothing got by her, you weren’t all that surprised to find out that this hadn’t.

“You’ll be joining the group then?”

You hadn’t really comes to terms with it, let alone saying it out loud.

“That’s the plan, should be official by tomorrow.”

Tears were still dripping down your face, you couldn’t find yourself caring though.

“Good for you. You deserve better, we all deserve better, may we all hopefully make a change.”

Alexia wasn’t officially a part of the movement, but she was everyway besides a signature as equally involved as everybody else.

“It just feels like i’m letting the team down, that I’m letting everyone down.”

Alexia nodded at you, finally coming out of her stretch and walking over to sit down next to you.

“You’re doing what’s good for you chica, your doing something that is going to make you happier, that is going to make your life better. Nobody else matters beyond that, trust me.”

Alexia looked at you, like she was genuinely struggling to help you out in the moment. She had been your mentor at Barca for forever, you seeked out her advice more than anybody elses, especially in this moment.

“I don’t know how to do it anymore, it’s like he was trying to ruin my fucking life, like his whole purpose for everyday was to make my life a living hell, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t walk around camp acting like it was fine, I couldn’t smile at cameras and talk to the press and tell them about how great I was feeling when it was all lies, all I wanted to do was leave, or sleep, or die, all because of his and his staff. They were hardly feeding me, hardly letting me sleep, hardly giving me a break and expecting me to perform at the same level as everybody else, if not better. I just couldn’t do it anymore Ale, it was too much.”

Alexia’s arm placed itself on your knee, squeezing your covered skin.

“You shouldn’t have to, you needed to leave and you did, you made the right decision chica, you made a impossible decision that will make your life 100 times easier, it doesn’t make you weak, it makes you so incredibly brave for being able to identify that you were being treated wrongly and that you needed to remove yourself from that space.”

The tears kept falling, your pants were slowly becoming soaked with the raw emotion.

“Mapi did it because of the abuse, because she had a legitimate reason, I’m leaving because they worked me a little bit harder than everybody else, it feels like I’m overreacting.”

You could feel Alexia rolling her eyes from beside you.

“Really? Has Mapi told you that?”

Mapi had told you that you deserved the world, you deserved everything you wanted, you deserved to be treated like a queen, not how the RFEF was treating you. She’d told you the decision was yours, that she would support you no matter what you did, but she’d also told you that after every camp you came back with a little bit less of yourself, that Vilda was stripping parts of you away to use at his mercy.

“It’s not the same thing, Patri, Pina, Mapi, they all have good reasons, they’ve all been hurt, Vilda is just trying to make me better, trying to make me worthy.”

Alexia’s hand squeezed tighter.

“You’re lying to yourself and you know it. As long as he is in charge, you aren’t going to get treated how you deserve, none of us are. We’ve all paid our dues, yet they don’t give a shit, they break us all down until we’ve got nothing left to give. They broke me down until I did my acl, if you hadn’t of left they would have done the same to you. It’s nonstop, even if it isn’t the same kind of abuse as Mapi, it’s still abuse, they still rip out every part of you in the process. Each time you come back you have less of yourself to offer, but they keep taking, and taking, they make us feel nothing. It’s a waste, it’s a waste of the wonderful life we’ve all been gifted. We deserve to be happy, we deserve to be free of the pain.”

You nodded your head, you’d been avoiding telling Mapi about all of this. You were conscious that she was still working through a lot of her own trauma, and you didn’t want to reopen scars that were only just beginning to heal.

“I don’t know what to do Ale, I sign the papers, I write the letters and I’m taking a stand, I’m trying to make a change. I stay, I wreck it all, but I keep my career. It feels like I’m at a crossroads with myself, and I can’t talk about it weith Maps because god forbid shes already been through enough with her own struggle through it all, she doesn’t need me on top of that.”

Alexia stood back up, getting back onto her mat and pushing herself into another stretch, all whilst she maintained eye contact with you.

“Mapi’s talked to you about her struggles, si? She’s burdening you with her own problems, yet it doesn’t feel that way, because you love her and you’d do anything to make her pain less. I guarantee she’d feel the exact same way. You’ve been through a lot, none of us will ever be able to completely comprehend what you’ve been through, but if you started talking to your loved ones about it we’d be able to support you better. Or a therapist, I know Barca has been giving you sessions, but I mean a real psychologist, not just a person who tells you that you need a day off. You need somebody to help you, to actually make you feel like you deserve better than how they treated you, because I know that you know that but I don’t think you really believe it.”

The tears were slowly coming to a standstill, slipping less frequently down your face as Alexia talked to you.

“I don’t want to make her hurt any more than she already has.”

Alexia just looked at you, with that double eyebrow raise and little crinkle in her forehead.

“If you think that Maria wouldn’t do anything for you, even if it meant sucking every single inch of pain from your body and putting it into hers, she would do it and she would do it with a smile on her face. Her whole world, her whole solar system revolves around you and she’d want you to talk to her about this. She knows better than anybody else what you’re experiencing, she’s literally been where you are, so why not talk to her about it?”

It was true, for as long as Mapi and you had been together she’d tried to fix every single thing, she would do anything to make you feel better, this didn’t feel the same though.

“She deserves to live in a world where Vilda, where the RFEF, don’t affect her anymore. She signed the petition, she’s cleaned her hands of it all, and I should have done it with her, but I didn’t. I chose to keep playing for the benefit of my career, because I was greedy and decided that a Ballon D’or and any kind of accolade I was a shot at was more important then taking a stand and I hate it. I hate that now that I’ve won things that suddenly it’s all hit me that I don’t like what’s been happening, and I don’t want to support it. Mapi doesn’t deserve to go through it a second time, all because I was greedy.”

Alexia switched sides on her stretch, the sun was radiating off of her olive skin and her blonde hair, she looked ethereal.

“Have you told her anything about it?”

Alexia was frowning, like she was shocked by your actions.

“She knows that I was struggling at camp, she told me I was welcome to talk to her. After the last one she knew something had changed, she told me she was worried and I shook her off, because I thought she was being overprotective, but she was right, she had reason to be worried, I wasn’t okay. I’m not okay, i don’t know how to process it all.”

Alexia nodded.

“Go home, tell her what’s happening, see what she says, I think it’ll be a lot better than whatever you’ve thought up. Mapi has been my bestfriend for years, she’s dated my sister, she’s dated my friends and I can confidently tell you that she loves you more than any of them, you’re her do or die, all she’ll want to do is support you, please just go and talk to her.”

Alexia looked at you with such conviction and honesty that you couldn’t find it in you to try and fight her on the topic.

“Thank you Ale, I needed this, I needed to talk to somebody, needed to feel less crazy.”

Alexia did one last stretch before standing up, pulling you into a tight hug before you could pull away.

“You’re not crazy chica, you’re going through a very real, very hard time, and you deserve to have the people around you show you how much they love you.”

Alexia let go of you, shoving you back towards the door.

“Go talk to your girl, and sign those papers, and be happy, enjoy life, enjoy peace. You deserve it, chica.”

You nodded into Alexia’s shoulder, letting go of her and slipping back into her apartment, leaving her to get back to her stretching.

You shivered when you spotted Mapi’s car already parked in her spot. You knew you’d be cutting it close with getting home earlier then her, but you’d held a silent hope that you would be the first home. You hesitated to exit your car, scared of what the inside of your apartment held. You weren’t scared so much, more a little bit tentative of the conversation that you were about to have, knowing that it could majorly impact your relationship. In your heart, you knew that Mapi would love you no matter what, but it didn’t calm the nerves inside of you as you pulled your keys from the ignition, pulled out the papers that your lawyer had given you and exited your car.

The whole walk from your car, to the elevator and then down the hallway to your apartment had your heart thrumming inside of your chest. Your hands were quite literally shaking as you pushed your key into the door.

You toed your shoes off at the door, slotting them down beside the door before slowly walking your way through the entrance. It wasn’t hard to find Mapi, she was right in front of you, sitting down at the island bench, patting Bagheera and eating a post training salad. You knew that there was one meant for you still sitting on the shelf of your fridge, from when the two of you had meal planned yesterday. She looked so undisturbed, with the afternoon light coming in through the gaps in the blinds and the general silence that you were about to break.

You announce yourself by slinging your bag down against the wall, a loud enough noise that seems to wake Mapi from her happy daze.

She smiles as soon as her eyes set on you and it only makes the weight in your gut feel ten times heavier and the pain in your heart ten times worse.

You wanted to turn around and walk right back out the door you’d just walked through, but you couldn’t, not with the way that Mapi looked at you, like her whole day had been made by your appearance.

“Hola bebita, how was your meeting?”

Mapi’s smiling ear to ear, quite literally, you swear you can see every single one of her teeth. It had hurt you to lie to Mapi about where you were going today, telling her that you’d had a crucial appointment with your manager about some media things, it wasn’t a direct lie. You had met with your manager, instead of it being positive though, it had been quite the opposite.

You didn’t have any words to reiterate to Mapi, so instead you just picked up the papers that were tucked away in your hands and placed them down on the island infront of her.

Mapi looked at you with confusion for a few seconds.

“Just read them, you’ll understand it more once you have.”

Mapi didn’t hesitate, picking up the first piece of paper and scanning over it, before moving onto the second, then the third and so on, till she’d made it through the entire stack.

You stood anxiously on your toes the whole time, balancing from one foot to the other as you contemplated how Mapi was going to reply to this sudden change.

When she did finish, she looked up at you, a lot of questions hidden behind her curious eyes.

“I’m resigning, or requesting they don’t call me up. I don’t want to play for a federation that doesn’t care about me. I’m sorry I didn’t do it earlier, but I wasn’t ready and I’m sorry I’m bother you with it now but I’m also sorry I didn’t tell you about it earlier, I met with my lawyer for the first time today to sign the documents and write my statement. If it all goes to plan then they should be out in the next week. I don’t want to do it anymore, I can’t do it anymore, I’m sorry.”

Mapi blinked a few times, like you’d just blindsided her completely, and you figured you had.

“I didn’t even really know it was happening until after last camp, and I just realised that I was so exhausted and so tired and so sick of it all that I couldn’t do it again. I should have done it earlier, I should have been a part of it all from the start but I was scared and I still am scared Maps. This is supposed to be my job, I’m supposed to be grateful for the opportunities I’m given and yet I feel like I’m a fraud and I’m lying when I say that because I’m not grateful and I’m not happy and I can’t do it anymore, I just can’t. I’ve been praying every night that I get injured, so that I get a break like Ale, and I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”

Mapi just stood up and pulled you into her arms, silencing the rambling and making you realise that you were now crying again.

She slowly led you towards the couch, bringing you into her arms as you tried to take control of yourself.

It felt like every piece of anguish, every piece of fear, every piece of internal hatred was slowly being pulled from your body and it felt so good, like you were somehow being healed.

Mapi wiated until you were coherent enough, until you felt more resurfaced, and less like the bloodn was rushing through your ears and every though of self-doubt was spirally through the different ridges of your brain.

“Princesa, you’ve made this decision for you, si? Not because of me, not because of anybody else, because you believe this is best for you?”

You nodded into her chest, enjoying the feeling of your own skin pressed directly to hers.

“I’m sick of them making me feel this way Maps, I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s right.”

Mapi’s body was surrounding you, her scent, her feel, her everything, and it was all you’d needed today, everything that Alexia had assured you would make you feel better.

Mapi’s salad was forgotten on the counter.

Bagheera was somewhere else.

It was just the two of you, just the two of you to face everything.

“We’re put into boxes, as women, men try to make us be everything and yet nothing. It’s not right, we’re expected to be as good as the men, but we have to behave eloquently, say our pleases and thank yous and never be ungrateful for the piss poor conditions we put up with. We’re supposed to be passionate, but we’re not allowed to over react in any way. We can only underperform, not overperform. There are no expectations for us, because we’re women and we’re supposed to be worse than the men, but they’re are also so many expectations for us to meet. It’s okay for you to be done with that, there is nothing wrong with you saying no to constantly being abused. You’re not a fraud bebita and I’m here for you no matter what. You’re my girlfriend first, a person second and a soccer player last. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters, you matter, you’re feelings and how you feel is what matters.”

Mapi’s hand pulled your head from her neck, her lips connecting with your forehead with ease.

“I’m not doing it anymore Maps. I want to be strong, I want to say no. I want to be a part of the right side of history. I don’t want to sit around pretending everything’s fine when it’s not fine. It’s nowhere near fine and until there is a change it won’t be.”

Mapi nodded, pressing a series of kisses to your forehead.

“Then we’ll work it out, you’ll keep me in the loop and we’ll figure it out together, no more hiding these big feelings from me. We’ll go and see our therapists and take soe time off and do whatever you need to feel safe and happy, because what matters is you, nobody else, si?”

You nodded your head once again, enjoying the same smile that her face was covered in. her lips migrated down to your cheeks, pressing kisses to the rosiest parts, pushing the tears away.

“I’ve got you bebita, we’ve got each other, we’re going to be fine, we all are.”

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alexias-putellas · 4 months

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the grudge // barça femení x reader

barça femení x reader

was feeling sad and writing is my preferred version of therapy. definitely didn’t cry writing this.

also i am in no way intending to bash katie or insinuate anything about her past relationship. i love her more than life itself. she just happens to be the person who is facing my wrath.

i’m not too sure if this needs a warning. it’s a lil heavy but nothing is outright mentioned, more suggested.

you had been on autopilot since the breakup in may, focusing solely on football and not on your broken heart. you hadn’t allowed your barcelona teammates to see you cry but you welcomed their efforts to make you feel better anyway, craving the affection you knew you’d never get from katie again.

long distance wasn’t going to be easy and you knew that. but you were trying.

you pretended not to notice when she began pulling away, keeping up the façade that nothing was wrong, even when everything was falling apart. you tried not to push when she shoved, or snap when she bit. it broke your heart when you made a trip to london and ended up spending the entire weekend with leah and lia, not seeing katie once.

so really you shouldn’t have been so blindsided by the breakup.

when you received the news that you were taking over as captain for england for the world cup, you should’ve been ecstatic. your england teammates were, they were gentle and told you how much you deserved it, even katie texted to congratulate you. you didn’t open it.

england were storming through the competition, beating every team they faced. but something happened before the semi-final against australia. you’d finally become aware of the rumours that surrounded katie and caitlin, the rumours that claimed they’d started dating not long after your breakup.

there was no overlap, there couldn’t have been. you and caitlin were good friends when you played for arsenal so you told yourself that she’d never do that to you. neither of them would.

you didn’t shy away on the pitch. you shook caitlin’s hand and looked her in the eye. she almost seemed ashamed. despite having friends playing for australia, you pushed your team harder than before. was it to prove a point? maybe. but it worked. you had won. you had captained your team to the final and suddenly your personal life was far behind you.

when the final whistle blew in the spanish game, you didn’t cry. the switch still hadn’t flipped, you were still on autopilot. you comforted your teammates. you held alessia as she sobbed, you told lucy how proud you were, you hugged millie and rachel. you congratulated your spanish friends. you told ona how good she was and how excited you were that you were going to be playing together soon, you hugged salma, and cata, and aitana, and mariona. you held alexia as she cried, telling her how much she deserved it after everything she’d been through.

you still hadn’t cried. you weren’t sure if you could anymore. you were absolutely devastated and you almost felt guilty for not being able to show it properly.

but it started to catch up to you in mexico. during training, you could feel the waves getting closer, getting bigger. you stayed afloat, despite the desperate need to drown, and you kept the waves at bay as best you could. you were benched for the game against the tigres and you felt the waves again and in a moment of desperation, you reached for ingrid, squeezing your eyes shut and focusing on her and the comfort she radiated.

alexia was your roomate for the night. you followed her into the hotel and up to your room. she headed straight for a shower whilst you collapsed onto the bed.

everything seemed to hit you then. you were exhausted. you were grieving. you were drowning. you covered your face in an attempt to muffle your sobs, not wanting to disturb the blonde.

you were so focused on trying to stay afloat that you hadn’t heard the shower stop, or the door open, or the gasp that left alexia’s lips as she found you.

she pulled you into her arms without a second thought, holding you tightly to her chest as you cried. you tried to push her away, fighting in her grip, you didn’t want her to see you. you were burdening her. she was probably still on a high from the world cup and there you were, ruining it all.

her grip never relented. she never let go. not when you writhed or you swore at her. not when you begged and pleaded for her to.

she only let go a little while later once she was sure you were fast asleep, quickly and carefully placing you on the bed. she swiped her phone from the bedside table, quietly slipping out of the room.

unbeknownst to alexia, you’d started stirring as soon as your back hit the bed. a soft whimper left your lips as you patted the space next to you. with a new storm brewing in your head and the waves growing stronger with every breath, you didn’t know what to think about alexia’s sudden disappearance.

was she mad at you? was she already sick of you? your hands shook as your thoughts spiralled. you glanced at your phone. alexia had always said that you could call her whenever you needed but what if she’d changed her mind? or she ignored you?

with a shaky sigh, you settled for cuddling with the barcelona hoodie she’d previously discarded, crawling back under the covers and letting the exhaustion wash over you once again.

alexia didn’t wake you for breakfast the next morning. she knew you needed the sleep. she made her way to where the rest of the team were and mapi frowned when the blonde sat down at the table alone.

“where is the nena?”

“sleeping,” alexia answered. “she was upset last night so be nice to her when she wakes up, por favor.”

“she finally cracked?” lucy asked, a slight frown on her own face.

“yes,” alexia sighed. “it was not nice seeing her like that.”

“was she bad?” keira sat forward, her leg bouncing. aitana noticed and immediately placed her hand on her knee, giving her a small smile.

“sí. i have never seen her so upset.”

“hey,” ingrid said softly but firmly, sensing the growing anxiety amongst the girls. “she has us. she will be okay, we’ll make sure of it.”

ᡣ𐭩

“hi bagheera,” you murmured, running your hand along the smooth fur of the cat. he purred and leaned into your touch. “we’re roommates now.”

upon arriving back in barcelona, ingrid and mapi had practically demanded that you move in with them for the foreseeable future. you had no objections.

you watched with amusement as ingrid barked orders at some of your teammates, who had so graciously offered to help you move your things, wincing as mapi put a box down a little too hard.

ingrid pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a breath. frido and marta walked in then, saving mapi from her girlfriend. they placed the last of your things down and you shuffled over to them, thanking them quietly and giving them short hugs. ingrid thanked them too and frido made sure to ruffle your hair before they left.

you fell back onto the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. mapi soon invaded your vision and you really didn’t like the grin on her face.

“ay, maría, no!”

too late. mapi threw herself over the sofa and landed directly on top of you. you huffed out a laugh, a sound that instantly made the couple relax. it had been a long time since they’d heard you laugh.

“what do you want to do today?” ingrid asked you, leaning on the back of the sofa.

“not really in the mood to do anything,” you shrugged. “but if you two have plans—“

“we don’t,” ingrid said and you could tell she was telling the truth. “even if we did, i don’t think maría would want to go anyway.”

“i wouldn’t either, this is nice,” you mumbled, running your hand through mapi’s hair. “maybe tonight we can order pizza and watch movies?”

you watched as mapi moved her hand around blindly until she found your face, gently patting you on the head. “good idea, querida.”

ingrid smiled down at you both before gently nudging mapi. “first we need to help you unpack and get settled, come on.”

you both groaned but slowly got up. ingrid quickly put on some music and the three of you got to work. you had to admit it was pretty fun.

by the time you were done, you really had made the place like your own. the spare bedroom was decorated perfectly to your liking and you had little knick-knacks strewn around the other rooms.

they left you alone when you’d reached for your bags and you were quiet as you tidied your clothes into the wardrobe. as you reached for the last piece of clothing, your mouth grew dry.

ingrid paused outside of your door, fist raised ready to knock when she heard your soft cry. she pushed the door open, rushing over to you. you cried into the old arsenal hoodie as she pulled you into her arms.

“why does she get to be happy?” you asked through your tears. “why does she get her happy ending? it’s not fair!”

“no, it’s not,” ingrid agreed, pressing a kiss to your hair. “it’s not fair, elskling. but you know what? that doesn’t matter. you are going to get better, you are going to be so so happy. and so loved. more than you already are. she didn’t deserve you and you didn’t deserve this. but you are not alone, we are going to be with you every step of the way, okay? you won’t have to deal with any of this on your own anymore, i promise.”

you sniffled, fiddling with the hoodie strings. “you mean it?”

ingrid nodded. “i do. you have us and we’re never letting you go.”

with careful hands, the norwegian gently pulled the hoodie from your grip and tossed it onto the floor. you stared at it sadly for a few seconds. it was for the better, and you knew that, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less.

“vamos, chicas!” you heard mapi shout. “the pizza is here!”

ingrid stood and held her hand out to you. you took it gratefully, letting her pull you up. “thank you, ingrid. for everything.”

she shook her head. “you do not have to thank me for anything.”

“yes, i do.”

“no,” she said sternly. “now let’s go before maría eats all the food.”

“oye, i heard that!”

“good, you were supposed to!”

…would any of you be interested in me turning this into a series?

#woso imagine #woso fanfics #woso x reader #woso #barcelona femeni #barca femeni #alexia putellas #lucy bronze #keira walsh #ingrid engen #mapi león

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alisblackgf · 1 year

Note

YO ZAC WELCOME BACKKKKK,

But yk I got a request 🤞🏽

Earth-42!Miles with fem!spider-reader

Like reader was from 1610!miles universe but when he went to earth-42 she went with him and maybe like there was a prowler!reader in 42!miles universe but she died and hes like “look at the power you had here…with me”

(The rest up to you…yk how I like it zacy 😏)

YEAH OFC <3

𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: earth-42!miles x fem!spider!reader

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: angst(?)

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: in his universe, you’re dead. it’s not fair that some inferior version of him gets to have you alive and well while he’s stuck grieving you. he makes it his number one priority to show you what you could have with him. what you had.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: inhales exhales i don’t like this and idk if i did him justice but HOPEFULLY I DID. it’s a little messy idk if i did this right HELO i hope you like it anyway (shout out to rae for helping me with the spanish 🫶)

𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: hermosa - beautiful; tú eras mi vida y mi mundo - you were my life and my world; mi amor - my love

you woke up in a daze.

your surroundings were dark with only a little illumination coming from a small window. you tried to get up, but you were quickly dragged back down to notice you were tied to a pole. the more you pulled against it (to no avail), the more you lost hope.

you took a shaky breath and looked around the room to find miles tied up on a punching bag. he didn’t look conscious. his head is hung low and you could barely see his closed eyes. your heart dropped and made it your mission to get his attention.

“miles? miles!”

then, your spidey-sense goes off.

you hear footsteps drawing closer and closer to you, and you desperately try to break free from the pole.

“i wouldn’t wake him just yet, hermosa.”

your eyes widened as you looked back at miles, who was still knocked out. you were extremely confused at who was talking to you. they sounded just like your miles, but it wasn’t. you were about to speak, but then the mystery person came out of the shadows and kneeled down to see you.

it was..miles? but not your miles for sure. this miles had braids, and judging from the term of endearment he called you earlier, he could for sure roll his r’s. he gently took your face in his hands and scanned you for any sign of injury. when he makes sure you’re fine, he smiles at you.

“you’re just as beautiful as i remember,” he says.

“i’m sorry?” you ask, seeing as you’ve never met him in your life.

he sighed at your words and untied you from the pole. when your hands are free, you rub your wrists in an attempt to ease the soreness that enveloped them. you tried to shoot a web, but you soon notice that your web-shooters are gone.

“c’mon, mami, you don’t think i’m dumb, do you?” he chuckles at your attempt before untying your feet, and you stretched your legs in response. once he’s up, he holds out his hand to you. you hesitantly accept. he helps pull you up from the floor and you dust yourself off.

he looks at you before asking, “i’m assuming your name is (y/n)?”

you nod in response, looking a little concerned before saying, “how’d you know?”

“because that’s what my girl’s name was, and you look and sound just like her.”

“your girl?” you ask curiously. he nods and shows you a polaroid picture of him and a girl. he was right, she looked exactly like you. “why isn’t she here?”

his facial expression went from relaxed to serious. he sighed before speaking, “she’s dead.”

your eyes widen. you know you’re not his (y/n), but hearing that a version of you is dead sends shivers down your spine.

“tú eras mi vida y mi mundo, (y/n). you were taken from me for the same reason you save people now.”

“and what’s that?”

“your compassion,” he says with a slight bitterness to his tone. “you cared so much for people. too much. i shouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”

you listened eagerly. even if she wasn’t you necessarily, you were still curious to hear how a variant of you died.

you put your hand on his shoulder and nodded, and he took it as a sign to continue.

“we were handling business. two guys had crossed us. i was taking care of one, you were with the other. he was begging for his life, and you showed him kindness and spared him. then, he..”

you could hear his breathing getting shaky, and you began to rub his shoulder.

“you don’t have to finish, i— i get the gist of it,” you assure him.

he nods and pulls you into a hug. you hesitantly hug him back, feeling bad for him. once you wrap your arms around him, he whispers to you, “i’m never letting you out of my sight again, mi amor.”

your breath hitches and your eyes widen.

“i’m so, so sorry for your loss, miles. but i’m not her. i don’t belong here,” you try to reason. you hear shuffling on the punching bag and you can see miles—your miles—stirring awake.

“miles! you’re okay!” you gently move the other miles off of you and run to your miles.

“for the most part,” he tries to joke.

“i don’t think you get it,” earth-42 miles begins to speak. you turn away from your miles to look at the other one. “you had so much power with me, (y/n).”

“what’s this dude on about?” earth-1610 miles whisper-asks you, but all you can do is shrug in response to him.

“look, i’m sorry that your girlfriend died, but i’m not her, and i never will be,” you spat, getting annoyed.

“i’ll give you two options,” the other miles begins. “you can die with bug-boy here, or you can come rule the streets with me.”

your eyes widen as he walks over to you guys, now in a prowler suit. he puts his gauntlet on and shoves you out of the way, putting his hand around your miles’ neck, choking him.

“pick your poison, mami. let’s hope you make the right choice.”

I REALLY HOPE I DID HIM JUSTICE OMG

tags: @pr0wlerpunk

#zac has written #across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse x reader #atsv #atsv x reader #atsv miles #atsv miles morales #miles morales x reader #atsv miles x reader #miles morales x you #miles morales #miles morales x y/n #miles x reader #miles 1610 #miles 42

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myfandomprompts · 10 months

Text

You Belong To Me Now

Summary: Aemond has become Prince Regent, and there is now nothing holding him from claiming you.

A/N: Quick smutty darkish!Aemond x Reader I wrote, nothing fancy

Words: 2.8k Masterlist [Spanish version - Wattpad by daisy_dont]

Warnings: praise kink, biting, vaginal, bruises, choking, obsession, dom, blowjob

Aemond had been Regent for a few months now, and although the Valyrian steel of the Conqueror’s crown didn’t rest upon his head yet, it was now an undeniable fact to every member of the realm that he had been born for this. All could finally witness his real worth, his superiority and how good he was at being a commander, a King.

No, he excelled at it. The Blacks haven’t even dared to approach King’s Landing even once in the last few months, and under his command all fear him, all obey him. He was far better at this than his father ever was, than his sister ever will be, and certainly than his broken brother is, tucked in his bed.

His new duties obliged him to be away often, to ride Vhagar and lead his armies on the usurpers who wanted to decimate them and take his city, but when he was back in the Red Keep, all he sees is you.

In fact, he wonders why he had never noticed you before as he crosses paths with you in the corridors, watches you in the throne room during audiences, laughing and hugging your lady friends. Maybe you are part of a House who came to the capital in order to help grow his army, that you are the daughter of an ally he had never bothered to be properly introduced to, because this was all they were to him: his subjects.

Nevertheless you are there, bright as the sun when he spots you when he least expects it and, despite his limited vision, he doesn’t seem to miss your presence, ever. He doesn’t miss the way you play with your hair when you're deep in thought, how your hips sway when you walk, how your fingers surround the glass you take to drink and how the skin of your throat glows as you swallow the liquid.

That he became obsessed was an understatement. There was no rest for his mind, and even amidst the excitement of the battle he thought about your appreciative look when he would return, triumphant. He had talked to you once, the sound of your voice making the hair on his skin raise in delight as he was introduced to you. He knew your name now, and he wouldn't stop there, you occupied every corner of his mind and inhabited his skin.

However and to his greatest dismay, the crown keeps him occupied, reducing the occurrences he can observe you, enjoying how you don't cower under his gaze; you staring back at him like it's a game, one that he never intends to lose.

He doesn’t miss the glances you draw from other lords either, eliciting an icy violence deep within his body and it makes his desire for you grow ever greater. He wants you to be his, completely.

This is why he sends for you one night, confident that you cannot refuse after spending the day looking at you like a starved dog, the lust between his legs becoming harder and harder to control. But he was Aemond Targaryen, and what he wanted, he would have.

When you enter his chambers and he dismisses his servant; you look at a loss, but intrigued, like a deer caught between hounds but you are still composed, the very image of a Lady from a House he had only bothered to learn its name today. All he knows, deep in his gut, is that you are right where you are supposed to be.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

He takes in your looks, the way your eyes glints with curiosity, the heaving of your chest constricted in this infernal gown he only wishes to rip off, and how sweet you look as you blush out of uneasiness.

When you shake your head so softly, he grins before coming to stand before you. “You’re here to help me with a matter that needs tending to. But first, I need assistance removing my clothes.”

The widening of your eyes makes the colour of it stand out better, and he waits for you to process his order and obey, admiring your beautiful features and the way your lips part in shock. “Go on."

He knows you cannot refuse, seeing the slight confusion in your eyes as your hands reach the buckles of his collar, undoing it one by one with your pretty, trembling little fingers. It takes all of his patience to not move his hands over your form and revel in the sight, smiling to himself.

When his green doublet is removed, his linen shirt remains and he doesn’t let you take a breath when you pull away. “It’s not over, is it? Continue.”

You cast an almost fearful glare at him before resuming your task, helping him out of his shirt gently with concentrated eyes and when your skin touches his in the process, he has to stop a shaky exhale from escaping his mouth.

He sees how you look at his toned chest, pale defined arms, and then glance at his trousers with tight lips. He retains a sneer as he turns away from you and towards his bed, surprising you with his sudden departure.

“Do you know how the other lords look at you, sweet thing? How they look and look, like they had a chance with you? Do you know how much they wish they could bury their cocks into you and take you as they pleased?”

You turn a lovely shade of red, spreading from your face to your neck and below your cleavage, his lewd words disconcerting you and your perfect little honour. How he likes it on you, that innocence.

“Of course you don’t,” he continues, taking a seat at the edge of his bed and not missing a piece of your deliciously growing, panicking state. “You don’t care about them, do you? You just care about serving your Kingdom at most of your capacities.”

You swallow, your body noticeably relaxing lightly at his words but the movement draws his eye to your neck and he instantly wishes he could mark you there, right at the junction of it, where a mole he had not noticed before lays.

“My Prince, I-”

“Come here,” he beckons, patting on his lap after your croaked out attempt of a response. He will spare you the need to explain that yes, you do want to serve your realm loyally, and thus serve him as well.

You hesitate, eyes darting between his legs and his face, and the lust grows at the thought that he might have to make you obey by other means. But at the sight of his hard expression, you have the good sense to approach, slowly, coming to stand between his legs and he grabs your hips at once, lowering you down onto his lap abruptly.

You let out a yelp at that, your legs forced to straddle him and you have to cling on his shoulders for support, face flushed and thinking fast. Aemond, on the other hand, feels every cell of his body come alive, a wicked smile appearing on his face.

“You know, I haven’t been with many women, but you… you’re something else, aren’t you? You make me understand why men look at women the way they do, what they find so irresistible about them....” he murmurs, putting one strand of your hair aside while his eye trails the pumping of the veins in your delicate neck. “Why all of those lords look at you… But they can’t have you.”

His tone is firmer now, unforgiving. “I have a claim on you they don’t have, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence you came here. That you are in this castle, under my protection.”

You seem unable to speak and the little noises he hears as you try to take a more comfortable position on his lap are like music to him, making him harder under his pants. He takes your hips a little too roughly than he intended in order to pull you to him.

“I’ve been thinking about you for days now, and I ran out of patience, so here is what is going to happen, sweetling. You’re going to take my cock, fully, like the sweet and obedient lady you are so I can feel every damn corner of your cunt, deep enough for me to fill you up.”

With his last sentence he pulls you closer onto him so you can finally feel his hardened state and you whimper in shock, the sound resonating into the room like a pathetic echo as he takes in the sweet scent of your skin, his nose trailing your neck hungrily.

“Hmm, my little pet, so flustered…” he praises as you tense on top of him, your pelvis hitting his member delectably. “You didn’t think I rode the largest dragon in the world and had nothing to show for it, did you?”

He takes a few more moments to enjoy the friction of your layers against his groin, feeling your body turn soft before gently pushing you away from him to let you unlace the ties of your gown with a commanding look. When you are bare before him, he licks his lips, the sight of your pretty little pussy making his now free cock throb in anticipation.

“You are gonna take me so well, you want to please your Prince, don’t you?”

The way you quickly nod in submission destabilises him so much that he has to take a moment before finding his composure again, his desire slowly growing out of control as he stares at you. But he must be patient, enjoy this, because he is no low man, nothing like the rest of them. So he sits back on the bed and invites you to him, noticing your already blown pupils staring at him.

He doesn’t care that you aren’t prepared, that it might be difficult for you to take him this early because the urge to sheath himself deep inside of you is too strong. But when you hover over him and your folds meet his tip you are so fucking wet that all his fears are swept away, replaced by the indescribable lust that takes hold of him, eager to have you, exactly like you want him.

The sensation makes him unable to concentrate before he puts his hands on your thigh to help you down, and it’s absolutely amazing. You’re warm, tight, right for him; the sweet moan that escapes your lips making him twitch as he looks at your knitted brows that tells him you are feeling him, truly feeling him. You go achingly slow and he can’t help but hiss in frustration, but at this point you deserve to have your own pace; he will be able to take his due later, when you’re accustomed to him.

He can tell from your expression that it hurts, and it makes his loins surge with fire at the thought, the wickedness of it so darkly satisfying.

“That’s it, all of it. You’re doing so well.”

He finally feels resistance nudging at his tip and he knows you are completely his now, looking at his cock buried deep inside your cunt and you let out a high pitch moan when you still, flesh against flesh in the most deliciously painful kind of way.

It feels right, he can almost feel your heartbeat upon his length and when he slightly withdraws in order to surge his hips forward, instantly hitting your depth hard, you wail loudly.

Aemond laughs as he squeezes your hips harder. “My sweet pet, so beautiful for me. How is it to feel it so deep? Do you want to move for me?”

He grunts when you start to move; he doesn’t have to do anything, your warmth and slickness making him absolutely wanton, and he doesn’t think he had ever felt this complete in his life. It allows him to look at you, take in your bouncing breasts, magnificently round, and he can’t help but reach for them, propping himself up on a sitting position before biting one of your nipples hard, and the sound you let out makes him want to do it again.

But for now he wants to mark you everywhere, your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, your delicate shoulders. He wants to cover you with his tongue and bruise you while you ride him so exquisitely, his mind foggy and half conscious. He feels your nails digging into his back when he sucks at the base of your neck, leaving a trail of drool that covers your skin. He bullies your breasts for his own pleasure and his cock feels every one of your jolts, squeezing him.

He makes you swivel, his length briefly sliding out of you before he lays you down on your belly and enters you again, lacing one arm behind your back to help him pound into you mercilessly, taking full control for the first time and it feels so good that a shameless growl resonates deep within his throat.

“You’re married, aren’t you?” he asks with a grin, admiring your back and the curve of your ass.

“Promised…” you pant through your moans. “To Lord Blount…”

“I see… Then Lord Blount will have an assignment in a land far away very soon,” he purrs with arrogance as he quickens his pace.

The new angle makes you moan loudly, your position seemingly uncomfortable enough to make each rocking of his hips like it’s the last you’ll be able to take. Soon you’re clenching around him, screaming out loud while your shattering orgasm turns you into a puddle in his arms when he lifts you against his chest, whispering in your ear.

“Fucking hell, you like that, don’t you? You couldn’t help but come all over my cock like the good lady you are.”

He keeps jerking his hips until you grow completely silent, feeling his legs momentarily weak when your walls give him a particularly strong squeeze and he withdraws.

You’re unable to move so he lets you lay back on the bed as he examines your folds, red and swollen from his brutal pace and he passes one finger between them to gather your slick. You moan at the sensation as he tastes you, licking his fingers hungrily.

“Bloody Seven, you taste delicious,” he praises as you try to find your breathing. “You’re mine from now on, understood?"

He barely acknowledges the curt nod you make before he laces his fingers around your neck, drawn to its softness and the bruises that begin to form there. He strokes the column of it softly, thoroughly, before grasping the base of your throat so he can hold on to it, hovering over you as he slides gently into you again, your folds spasming briefly from your aftershock. He sees you close your eyes, hiding your beautiful irises from him and he wishes you would look at him, something you do when you feel his hand around your neck constricting.

“Aem-” you let out.

“What is it?” he asks, watching your lips make the most amazing sounds he had ever heard while he rocks into you, his weight on your neck. “Is it my name you want to say? You can scream it if you want.”

But you don’t, to his greatest displeasure, apparently unable to do so as your features stiffen, so he snakes a hand to your dripping cunt, zoning on your swollen clit and you tremble beneath him. When he works your bud, fingers circling it at an unrelenting pace, your lips form an “o” and he decides here and there that he will cum in your mouth. For now, he concentrates on the roll of his hips and the movements of his fingers, one over your neck and the other making you grind onto it in yearning.

You are at his mercy.

“Will you scream my name now, pretty little thing? I can feel you close…”

It takes a tremendous effort from his part to not come undone himself when you finally do, trapped at his own game as you pulse around him, your back arching, and the way you finally cry out his name doesn’t help the little restraint he has left. He growls when you go limp under him, unwilling to let go of your neck and overstimulated bud as he works you through your climax.

“On all fours,” he commands when he finds enough composure to speak, propping himself up on his knees on the mattress and daring to pump himself a few times while you do as told.

He instantly comes to grab your hair, your expression completely in disarray from his brutal ministration on you and, when your mouth meets his weeping head, he can’t process anything, the contrast between the intensity of your folds and the soft warmth and slowness of your tongue killing him. He has the greatest desire to buck his hips into your mouth, to take it all, but your tongue traces along his throbbing vein right before you suck at his most sensitive part and he finishes right there with a croaked moan, painting your mouth with his seed.

You are both panting hard, and when he looks at you behind his hooded eyes, admiring his work, he brings your chin between his fingers and wipes your lips, glossy from his release. “You’ll be there each time I come back, won’t you, pet?”

You nod frantically, exhausted before falling on the bed next to him.

A/N: Thank you @babyblue711 & @arcielee for the beta reading, so much <3

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen smut #aemond #hotdfic #aemond targaryen x reader #smut #dark!aemond x reader #usermyfandomprompts #hotd 1x09 #aemond one-eye #prince regent aemond #Aemond prince regent

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randombush3 · 3 months

Text

dies irae

alexia putellas x reader

part one, part two, part three

words: 12425 (sorry not sorry)

summary: part four, the part that made me realise another part was necessary

warnings: drugs, alcohol, cheating, (a lot of???) vomiting, general angst tbh

notes: in all honesty, i started this with the intention of finishing the series, but it hit 12k and i thought maybe not x

weird little comment, but the last section was originally written in spanish (hear me out: i was on the plane and i didn’t want the people beside me to read it over my shoulder) and i’m still feeling a little iffy about my translation of my og version but oh well!

i hope you enjoy this and are content w waiting another five years for me to churn out the new FINAL part

The sand is warm beneath your feet, each grain rubbing against your bare soles as you sprint. The ground under such surfaces often hardens, proven by the sweat trickling past the thin string of fabric that holds your bikini together. If the beach were not so private, you would be worried about wandering camera lenses.

However, there is no one else here but your favourite people. Well, maybe Nico has dropped to the bottom of the list now that your energy has been worn down while his does not seem to waver.

“I give up,” you pant as he continues to tumble down the shoreline, changing his tactics and swerving into the water, comfortable in his sea. The same sea he looks at each morning from your bedroom window. The one he learnt to swim in. (That and a variety of hotel pools.) “You win, you win!”

The small figure, around twenty metres away, comes to an abrupt halt, wobbling on little legs for a moment. Then he begins to run again, but this time towards the towels and constructed shade you had set up earlier. Unwillingly, you race him back to base camp.

“He ganado,” he declares as he taps Alexia’s shining back as though she is the signpost signifying the finish line. Your hand caresses the divots of muscle soon after, brushing sand across smooth, tanned skin. Nico peers at you strangely, but understands, thanks to Tia Alba, that the beach outfits are special to his mothers.

“Mi ganador,” comes a tired murmur of praise.

“Did you see, Mami? I was so far ahead.” She nods, craning her neck upwards to talk to him. You gladly sprawl out on the vacant towel, passing on the baton to your wife, fortunate that Elena has been asleep in her buggy for the past twenty minutes. “Can I play with Lela now? Is nap time over?”

“No, sweetheart, naptime has just begun.” He looks up at you with pleading, bored eyes. The one unfortunate consequence of going to a private beach is that, unless you bring along your babysitter, there is no one else for Nico to play with. Alexia and you are both exhausted, and today is supposed to be about relaxation. Three-year-olds don’t understand that concept. “If you don’t want to sleep, how about burying Mami?”

“In the sand?”

“Sí, in the sand.”

He leans close to your ear. “Mami says I’m not allowed to do that,” he whispers, though he has not quite mastered the volume of such a tone yet. Alexia pretends not to be listening, but you can feel her foot prodding your shin in protest.

“Rules are sometimes made to be broken,” you tell him. “And if you do bury her, the only way to make her happy again is to get ice-cream. Which means you can also get ice-cream.”

“You are so annoying,” grumbles Alexia.

“This morning, I believe the word you used was ‘sexy’,” you retort. With the Euros on the horizon, it seems that the two of you are using up what little time you have to spend together. Though Alexia sometimes feels like there are hands wrapped around her neck after she failed to win the Champions League once more, she is more than happy to take advantage of the time off before she tries to make amends internationally.

“Mm. You are magically both.”

You tug your sunglasses – Prada, brand-new from a modelling campaign – down slightly, so that they sit lower on your nose. The sun is warm and doing its best to wear Nico down as he finds his discarded spade and begins to dig, and Elena is still fast asleep.

A mischievous grin forms on your lips, one that Alexia knows well. Topless, she flips over onto her back, excusing herself with a muttered comment about an ‘even tan’, and that is invitation enough for you to cup her cheek, your touch as fiery as the surface of the sun that blankets the beach. The gentle breeze ruffles your hair as you lower yourself down to her level.

“The phrase is ‘annoyingly sexy’ in English, darling,” you murmur, your eyes locked onto hers. Even now, after six years, the proximity ignites desire over every inch of your skin, and you cannot wait to kiss. Alexia’s initial grumble turns into a soft chuckle, her eyes sparkling with a mixture of amusement and something more. Impatiently, you kiss her, aware that the moment will soon be ruined by a spray of sand as Nico pursues his mission.

She is just as eager to kiss you back, craving the way you seem to hold the solution to every problem. Part of Alexia’s mind has not yet been able to comprehend the way in which you love her. It is hidden by the other, much larger compartment: the one that reminds her every day that she should never, ever tell you, because it would break your heart. To you, Alexia is making up for lost time. To her, she is secretly begging for forgiveness that you don’t even know she is due.

She knows the minute your phone rings that everything is about to go wrong. No one is supposed to call you today; you have been emphatic about it. You blindly reach for the ringing device, ready to lob it into the ocean, but Alexia grabs your wrist. “It must be something important,” she says, and it feels like she is telling you she understands; you are busy, and she understands.

“I’ll be quick, I promise.” With a quick jog up the steps and onto the concrete of the promenade, you perch on the stone wall separating the beach from the carpark, bare feet swinging over the edge. The rough surface of the wall presses uncomfortably into the exposed flesh of your bum, but you remind yourself that you will soon be lying back down on the beach towels. “Hi? I thought we agreed that pretty much everything could wait until tomorrow. I don’t care about any photos taken of me, and you know that my automatic position is simply to ensure that the children’s faces are blurred out before they get spread around.”

“Y/n!” Your publicist sounds nervous. It’s a stressful job, you guess. Between organising interviews and brand deals and the like, she has to stamp down on unwanted rumours and be on the look-out for any perceived cracks in your very public person. Naturally, you are not perfect.

“Yeah, I’m here. Hi.”

“I’m afraid that it’s not a picture of you this time.” Alexia is now famous in her own right, as she always should have been. With a Ballon d’Or under her belt, you have been promoted to a ‘celebrity couple’.

“She has her own team, you know.”

“I’m sure she will be firing them soon.” The joke fails to land, instead crashing and burning and… You freeze.

“Why?”

“I am sure that you are aware we have feelers out for anything that could potentially harm your reputation.” You nod foolishly, caught up in the undisclosed severity of the phone call, forgetting that she cannot see you. “An hour ago, we were contacted by a photographer; one of the usual ones we get in when you’re in need of a bit of a press-boost. He’s based in Barcelona, has lots of friends in the area and such. I have the terrible job of telling you.”

Your heart quickens as the confession hangs in the air, leaving a heavy silence on the other end of the line. The anticipation builds, and you can almost feel the impending storm swirling just off the coast, waves beginning to thrash against rocks, nature beginning to tear the world down.

“He claims to have some photos, ones that could potentially damage your image,” she says, tone measured and professional. “I haven’t seen them yet, but he described them as… intimate, to say the least.”

“Of Alexia?” you question carefully, forcing the words onto your tongue. “Intimate? What do you mean?”

“Well, they are of her and someone else. Someone who isn’t you.”

“Who?” Dread sets in, and the wall is suddenly not the most uncomfortable thing about your position. You feel too exposed, unsafe in what you are wearing. Taken advantage of, perhaps.

Cheated.

“I have not seen the photos yet, babe. I don’t know what else to tell you.” He would have attached them in his email. Paparazzos don’t have time to harass you digitally as well as in real-life. She must have avoided opening them. Or. Or she is lying.

“I need to see those pictures,” you assert, your need for clarity driving the sentence forwards.

“Are you sure?” You nod again, unable to speak past the lump in your throat, knowing that she cannot see you but feeling helpless to do anything else. She takes your silence as confirmation. There is a brief click of a mouse, and the animated swoosh of an email. “They should come through in a moment.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you… alright?”

She quickly takes the hint from the lack of response and hangs up.

You rest your phone on your thigh as your arms grip onto the ledge of the wall, pulling yourself backwards so that you do not fling yourself off it. You shake as you reach safety, and your fingers feel numb as they tap the screen, accessing your emails robotically until a pinwheel is all that separates you from the photos.

Intimate, huh.

They are practically snogging.

There are eleven images, and each one delivers a blow more painful than the last.

The beach feels confined, like an elaborate cage that you cannot escape. The shoreline creeps towards you, and you seem to be pressed against the hot metal of the car in the carpark. You struggle to recognise the scenes captured as ones where you were present, and the unfortunate date in the bottom right-hand corner evidences the photos as a time when you were not in Barcelona at all: 2021.

The realisation hits hard and you find that everything you have ever believed to be true has simply been a cruel joke that you were excluded from.

What you have been sent is more than just proof; it is a betrayal etched in pixels, an undeniable record of a moment that shatters the foundation of your relationship. Your heart races as your scroll through the images, cruelly reminded of a reality you desperately wish were not true. One you had no idea existed. One that had been kept secret from you.

The lump in your throat grows, and your eyes blur with unshed tears. You are overwhelmed by sharp pain coursing through your veins, and it is as if you have been injected with a poison that burns through your cell tissue, disintegrating every block of your body. It scorches the things you know to be true.

Love goes up in flames before your eyes.

And then a voice that you really do not want to hear speaks, and, just like that, the ashes of what has disappeared are suddenly ablaze once more.

“Nico y yo vamos a tomar helado. ¿Quieres algo?” Sandals, sunglasses, a loose linen shirt. Nico holds her hand, proud of himself. You cannot bear to look at either of them, so you stare at the towels a few metres beneath you.

“Where is Lena?”

“Dormida, aún.”

Shaking, you stand up, enjoying the sharp rocks that pierce into your skin, reminding you that you are yet to die. “Take Nico. I’ll go back down and sit with her.”

“Vale. Te quiero.”

You don’t reply. You wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

Every step feels as though the world is cracking open and you are going to fall to your death, yet, in the midst of the impending doom, you feel as calm as can be. Numb, perhaps.

Elena stirs as you adjust the parasol providing her the necessary shade. A hand reaches out, prepared to grab onto you, searching for your body like you are her lifeline. You are her lifeline; you are her mother. And so is Alexia.

A tear rolls down your cheek as you let her pull your fingers to her mouth, nails brushing her lips as she whines with the headache of waking up from a nap. “What are we going to do?”

…

The car journey home is silent on your part. You stew in your nothingness, unwilling to engage in the light conversation Alexia creates to keep Nico awake before his sleep schedule is ruined. Barcelona flashes past you, and the city that you once admired feels like the scene of a crime. Looking out the window is almost as sickening as if your eyes were to land on the woman beside you. Almost.

You withhold your grief for the evening, going through the motions of nightly chores; putting the kids to bed, finishing the remainder of your packing, drying the dishes without throwing them at the blonde hair that sails past as she sorts her own suitcases out. A few texts are exchanged between you and your publicist, in which you graciously decide that those pictures will not come from you. Though if her team fails to catch them before they reach Twitter, that is not your problem.

Under the soft glow of the bedside lamp and the comforting blanket of darkness, you clear your throat.

It has been six hours since you found out.

Every second that has passed has done so with excruciating pain, yet you cannot determine whether it has sunk in at all yet. You wonder if, given the chance, you would crumple into yourself and weep as though she has died.

When you look at Alexia, readying herself for bed, you decide that the whole situation is laughable.

You are so stupid. You thought she loved you more than that, and you were embarrassingly incorrect.

“I want you to leave now,” you say firmly, only the bed between you. Alexia pauses, pyjama shorts halfway up her muscular legs as she peers at you curiously. Her confusion is infuriating. “I want you to… go to your mother’s or something. You’re not sleeping here.”

“Why? What have I done?”

She speaks as though this is a normal argument, or as though you are hormonal and unreasonable. You clench your fists and remind yourself not to wake the children up. “I am surprised you didn’t follow her to Mexico.”

It is then that Alexia Putellas realises three things. The first: she hasn’t spoken about Jenni since she left for Pachuca, and she barely pays attention when Nico persuades her to find the stream for the striker’s matches. The second: it has been six months since Jenni called whatever they were doing quits. And the third… the third is how well and truly fucked she is.

She should have confessed her crime the minute she first slept with her; the night after they were knocked out of the World Cup. Elena wasn’t even a concept, then. You took her back though you were unaware you had ever lost her.

Last year, when it was Alexia all alone, she should have confessed her second betrayal. A longer, more hurtful betrayal. Something fuelled by meaningfulness, not passion and heightened adrenaline. If she were in your position, the physicality would not be what obliterated her heart; the emotion behind the entire affair would.

She wipes her eyes, aware that she has started to cry. It is all the confirmation you need. “I’m so sorry,” is the only thing she can think to say, but ‘sorry’ does not amount to the pain she knows she has caused. ‘Sorry’ won’t heal a wound that has cut deep, cut through years of love and happiness and supposed loyalty. ‘Sorry’ does not change the fact that Alexia lent herself to Jenni, let Jenni take her in any capacity she wished, and then returned to you as though it had never even happened.

In all honesty, part of Alexia is very curious about how you have found her out. Mapi would not risk being caught up in such a storm, and Jenni would gain only suffering from telling you because she knows that Alexia would never choose her. Though she has spent night after night with her finger hovering over her sister’s contact, she resolved never to tell Alba either, for fear that her sister would see her for the monster she is and side with you. Selfishly, Alexia does not want anyone to side with you, but even she finds it easy to hate herself.

“Is that all you can offer me?” you croak, and it is clear to Alexia that you are this calm because you are putting your children before yourself. They do not need to hear their parents’ marriage implode; not tonight, not ever. She cannot bear to meet your eyes as you pierce through her bowed head. “Alexia.” She pulls her shorts up fully, forehead parallel to the floor. “Alexia!” you snap.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats.

Alexia Putellas is regarded by most as intimidating, yet, here, she is anything but. She is meek. Pathetic.

She is a woman who continued to make a stupid mistake although she was given so many opportunities to fix it.

And, when Alexia finally grows the balls to look into your piercing eyes, she sees, reflected in your hardened, dark pupils, weakness and idiocy, rimmed with the most stinging of betrayals. It kills her to see you fight your own tears, and it is worse when you have to break eye contact because you are afraid you will vomit if it goes on any longer.

“You are packed, so you can leave tonight. Sort yourself out while I get the children up.”

Everything is ruined because of her.

It is the last night Alexia lives under the same roof as you. It is a horrible way to end a golden age, and the worst possible confirmation of the fleetingness of all things that exist. You hate the world, you hate Jennifer Hermoso, and you hate that you can’t bring yourself to hate your wife.

Alexia says goodbye to a sleepy Nico and a clingy Elena. Your daughter refuses to let her mother go the minute she is passed to her, and all four of you try your best not to cry, whether it be from confusion, regret, or heartbreak.

Nico, inquisitive as one is at his age, does not let the door open without questions. ‘Why now?’ is what causes Alexia to freeze, searching on your face for permission to have one more second with him. You cup the back of Elena’s head, fingers splaying out against her soft hair, soothing her back to sleep. And you nod.

She crouches to his level, dwarfed by her suitcases. In her pocket, her phone buzzes; her taxi has arrived. “¿Te acuerdas cuando te hablé sobre la responsabilidad? Soy la capitana, cariño, y tengo que cuidar a mi equipo, así que ‘ahora’ es lo mejor para ellas.” You are grateful for the lie.

“¿Ahora yo mando? ¿Como me dijiste?”

“Sí. Tienes que cuidar a Mama y Lela, y protegerlas como yo os protejo a vosotros. Y nos veremos prontito, petit. Te lo prometo.”

He is fighting his tears, stiff like a toy soldier marching off to an imaginary battle. You half expect Nico to salute with his chubby, unpractised fingers, but he simply stands there, between Alexia and you. Though Elena is safe in your arms, Nico is caught in the crossfire, two feet innocently leading him into no man’s land.

You take a deep breath as Alexia closes the door behind her. She has been driven out – her own doing – and she knows, because she knows you, that there will be no space in your life for her until your gaping wound dulls in pain. The journey to her mother’s house is the second time she ever considers killing herself, with the first being the night her father died.

But this is how it goes.

You fly to England the next day, holding it together until Elena and Nico are safely in the hands of Anya, but you do not give her a reason for her much-needed babysitting abilities.

It is a small secret. You keep it because on top of being in agony, you are so fucking embarrassed. You. You got cheated on. You weren’t enough for her. (And Jenni was?) It’s really easy to pretend you’re stressed for Alexia, knowing she is heading into a tournament that Spain could win but won’t.

The first official step you take – the very first – is with a nanny. You meet her the day after landing at London Stansted, and she seems to be the perfect choice for the interim period of your life that you have unexpectedly entered; she speaks Spanish, she is discreet, and she reassures you that she is there to enhance family life, not destroy it. And possibly another alluring factor: she is quick to sign an NDA and promise that no photos of your children will make it into any dogshit magazine.

Her first interaction with your children is two hours before your lunch with your publicist, manager, producer, and lawyer. They have agreed to congregate – they have seen the pictures (an exclusive peek, as the deliciously world-destroying surprise photoshoot has not yet been picked up by anyone with ganas to publish it). Each one has a purpose, each one wants to profit off your heartbreak, and, though they’d never admit it for fear of breaking their hard exteriors, each invitee would also like to see if you’re okay.

“Do you… like her?” you sheepishly ask your son while Isabela, the nanny, supervises Elena’s lunch. You’re not entirely sure your daughter understands that the hummus is supposed to go into her mouth, not redecorate the highchair table from white to beige, but Isabela does her best to instruct her, the familiar tinkle of Alexia’s language making your daughter’s eyes light up.

He looks a little puzzled. “Is she a babysitter?”

“Sort of.” You sigh, “it’s just that I have a lot to do, and Mami is playing football now. Isabela is going to help us, but I want to make sure that you want that.”

Nico shrugs. “Don’t care.”

“And she’s going to speak in Spanish, just like Mami does.” In anticipation of a worse reaction, you wince at the slight insinuation that you’re replacing Alexia. He doesn’t pick up on it.

“She sounds funny.”

“That’s because she’s from Colombia,” you answer him, and he nods, storing that information for later. Probably for when Alexia calls to speak to him (a moment you are dreading).

“Is Colombia near Mexico?” He perks up; you know what’s coming next. “Does Isabela know Jenni?”

You have to remind yourself that Nico has not done anything wrong. The fault of the mother is not the son’s, and, briefly, you pray he has inherited your fidelity for the sake of his future partners.

You pretend that the name that just fell from his lips does not fill you with the overwhelming urge to strangle someone. And, calmly, you reply, “probably not, but you can always ask her.”

…

Alexia does not know what to do.

She wishes, she really does, that someone would pass her a clock… and she knows she has trained and worked hard enough to wrestle the hands of time back a year and change her decisions in every situation. Alas, that is impossible.

She tells Mapi, as the team touches down in England, what has happened. The defender is unimpressed – angry, even, at her best friend – but nothing warrants what is to come.

The morning feels eerily normal. Breakfast is difficult, especially when all Alexia can think while she eats is that every morsel in her mouth fuels the monster she has become. Every bite, every sip of coffee, leads her to live another day. She is not particularly certain that she deserves that.

Mapi does not look at her, swerves her request to be partners when training begins. Head down, eyes slowly filling with tears, Alexia takes the punishment. She says nothing when Pina pinches her side, “Patri’s being annoying”, and drags her into the drill.

She runs, she passes the ball, Pina turns and shoots it into the mini-net.

Pina runs, she passes the ball, Alexia turns.

Something goes wrong.

Maybe it is that the pitch is uneven, cut up from whoever had trained before. Maybe it’s the pass, slightly off-target. Maybe she is at that point in her menstrual cycle where the risk of injury is higher – that’s being looked into, isn’t it?

Maybe it’s that her body can no longer stay so robust when everything else in her life is hurtling towards the ground in the most epic downhill slope possible.

Maybe.

The pop is unmistakable, and the pain searing. She can’t help the scream she lets out, barely registering whoever has rushed to her side while she presses her face into the dirt, tears watering the grass.

“I’ve done my ACL,” Alexia gasps, lifting her head up slightly. She catches sight of the blue sky, the green grass. The bright sun shining down on her, hot against her neck but nothing in comparison to the agony in her knee.

She blinks, thinking her eyes are blurring from her tears.

A second later, she is unconscious.

When Alexia wakes up, she is glad to have passed out. She has no memory of being hauled off the pitch or brought into the medical room. Her head aches and her knee throbs, but she knows that there is someone beside her so she does her best to hold in the immediate wave of sobs that seem to take over her.

A calloused hand reaches for hers, unclenching her fist, urging her to squeeze the pain away, pass off some of it to her companion. They have given her pain medication. She can tell because the white walls dance around her and the only word she can manage to get out is your name.

She whispers it over and over again.

“I know,” comes a soothing voice, poorly concealing the worry that cracks the tone. “Shh, I know, I know. You’re okay, Ale. She’s… she’s on her way.”

…

The call is unexpected.

Mapi never has much reason to talk to you on your own, unless you share a concern for your wife’s wellbeing. You suppose that’s a bit of a redundant commonality now. Your lawyers have drawn up a custody agreement and, upon meek request, divorce papers: a gift for after the Euros.

“Dime, Mapi. Estoy trabajando,” you say curtly, signalling from inside the booth that the phone call is nothing to worry about and you can resume the recording session in a moment.

Mapi’s news makes you even more resentful than you were already feeling, because you can’t help but sprint to your car the minute the address is given.

…

Pain becomes part of everyday life.

Crutches, too.

Alba and Eli already existed as frequent visitors, but the former increases her appearances so that she has moved in the day before Alexia’s surgery.

It spills out, the night of the surgery, that Alexia and you are no longer together. That you left her, with good reason. It’s a surprise, considering you had stayed by her side during the twelve hours in England between the medical room, the hospital, and the airport.

When Alexia reluctantly tells Alba why, Alba decides that you are a saint and her sister, a sinner. She holds her hands behind her back to keep herself from slapping Alexia across the face, but little does she know, Alexia longs for the anger, wishing she wasn’t being pitied for her injury. She wishes there was no injury to be pitied for, but, then again, she tells herself that she deserves it and accepts the agony as one would hold a blade to their wrists and slit them.

This behaviour, this quiet ideology that she has been punished for her mistake, is what leads Alba to ensure the keys to the balcony are hidden and the kitchen knives are tucked away in a cupboard, out of sight. Or perhaps it is what she hears her sister telling herself in the mirror. Worthless. Degenerate. Evil, cruel, horrible. Selfish!

She has two children with you, for God’s sake!

“I have ruined my own life.” Her words burn, the intensity of her anger enough to make Alba flinch, hands gripping the steering wheel harder, forcing her way forwards. The hospital comes into view and Alexia cries out in anguish. “I have ruined it, Alba! I have ruined everything!”

Alexia, The Ruiner.

She bears the new name with something more than disappointment. She lets the nurses examine her knee, compliment Alba for her care-taking, and reassure her about the surgery. She lets them talk her through possible complications, secretly hoping one will occur and she will wither away; no longer a footballer, no longer a mother, no longer your wife. Just Alexia, The Ruiner.

Alba and her argue, Alexia lying back in the cot, hospital gown patterned against clinically white sheets, light fabric against her paling skin. “You wanting to die is not you wanting to kill yourself. It’s your regret, and it’s your cowardice at not being able to face the consequences of your actions.” Alexia had been hot-headed enough to voice how she did not want to make it through the surgery. She is in excruciating pain, and is convinced they need to investigate it. “It’s your knee, not your heart. Your heart hurts because you cheated on her and she rightfully left you! Don’t you ever say something so fucking stupid again.”

“Alba!” Eli’s entrance is neither good nor bad. “Alba, leave her.” Alexia’s tears run down the sides of her face, hitting the sheets like little bullets. The soft caress of her mother’s hand across her cheek is no comfort, and Alexia only sobs harder. “You are going to be fine, mi cielo. The surgery is going to go well and you will come back even stronger.”

Alexia knows that, once you have torn your ACL, you are more likely to tear it again, so she mentally disputes her mother’s claim. She has no energy to voice the thought, however.

“Mamá, she’s convinced she’s going to have a heart attack.” Alba points to her sister’s chest, as if to disagree by showing their mother that nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. They begin to argue, and Alexia watches her family implode, deeming herself once more, Alexia, The Ruiner.

It’s not a heart attack, it turns out. She falls victim to a severe panic attack just as they begin to wheel her away. They increase her dosage of anaesthetic.

Unfortunately, the next morning Alexia comes to after a successful surgery and remembers nothing. That is until she looks to her bedside and finds only her mother there (Alba having gone to the big, empty apartment to adjust it to her sister’s newly-disabled lifestyle).

She relives the kisses Jenni used to press to her neck, the marks sucked into her skin though Jenni knew she was not hers to brand. She relives your expression when you told her you knew, the grimace you had worn, the way your eyes flicked to the ensuite as though you were going to throw up at any point.

She hears her knee pop again, sees the trophy slip from her grasp, sees it float into the realm of possibility along with the Champions League cup.

“You’re awake,” Eli says with surprise, offering a warm but sympathetic smile. She reaches out to touch Alexia, but Alexia jerks her body backwards, instantly regretting it when her knee begins to ache unbearably. “They said you’ll be in a lot of pain at first, but it will subside and, soon, you can start recovery. Your physiotherapist is going to visit in an hour or so, and I cannot count how many well-wishes you have received.” Weirdly, Eli thinks to herself, Jenni has said nothing.

Alexia shakes her head, trying to dispel the fog in her mind. “Do the… Do the children know I am hurt?”

“I believe so,” Eli replies with a nod. “Y/n broke the news to them, but we haven’t heard from her since you went into the operating theatre. I have no idea whether she’s going to come here. I assume she will.”

“She won’t,” mutters Alexia, refusing to look at her mother.

“Oh, don’t be so gloomy. She’s your wife, of course she is going to come.” A dark storm brews in the cagey hospital room, but Eli remains an oblivious ray of sunshine. “I know you don’t want Nico and Lela to see you like this, but they miss you. They must have been so excited for the Euros!”

All of it is the wrong thing to say. If Eli had known, she would have approached the uncertainty differently.

If Alexia were not so angry at herself, so guilty, so destructive, she would have calmly explained that your absence is both warranted and understandable.

Instead.

Well, instead, this comes out of her: “She is not going to come because I had a fucking affair and she has left me and taken the children to fucking England where they are probably never going to be allowed to see me ever, and I will live out the rest of my days as a fucking coach because I am useless and I am never going to play football again!”

Eli sits back in her chair, shocked.

“What have you done?”

Neither knows if it is a question or a damnation, but Alexia chooses to answer her mother regardless; “I have ruined everything, and now I am paying the price for it.”

…

Your friends gloat a little bit, calling it Karma. Anya and Gio are first in disbelief, but they soon progress onto the stage of hatred – something you have not yet been able to access.

For now, life feels as though it is on auto-pilot. Your children are happy and safe, your country is going to do well in the Euros, and time does not stop ticking no matter how hard you wish it would.

Alexia’s surgery is successful. You see the update on Twitter, not wanting to contact Alba or Eli in case Alexia thinks you have forgiven her. You haven’t. Perhaps you never will.

“There are two ways you can go about this,” Gio says with a smirk, holding out a thong to you as you stand in your bedroom in just a towel. “You’re hot and rich and famous… and now single, too.” You are not completely sure of that, but you nod, following along. You slip into the lace and then point to the England shirt folded on top of your pillow. It gets thrown at your face. “You can wallow in it and weep like a damsel in distress, giving her the satisfaction of breaking your heart…”

“I don’t think she wanted to–”

“She cheated on you,” Gio cuts you off bluntly. After a moment, your shoulders drop and you resign to hearing her plan. “As said earlier, hot, rich, famous… Babe, just get with someone else. Get with everyone else! Your babies are looked after 24/7 and this is London, my dear. The pond is really an ocean and you are a catch. As your bestest friend, I know what’s best for you. You’ve got an album coming out in September, a tour to hop on in November, and about three thousand dildos you can hop on after that!”

You cringe. “Don’t be crass.”

“Don’t be a prude.” She gestures to herself. “Look at me; Mia’s fine and healthy, doesn’t legally have to see her arsehole of a father, and I get a good shag every fortnight.”

“No, I’ve drawn up the custody agreement already. I’ll go back to Barcelona when the school year starts, and we can swap every two weekends. But I’m keeping our home – she can find somewhere else to live, seeing as all of this is her fault.”

“And the tour?” Gio asks as you pull on your England jersey and a pair of shorts. Good weather has blessed the start of the tournament, and you have been invited to the first match at Old Trafford by Manchester United themselves. Gio and Anya are coming, and you think they have put you in with a few of their players and executives. Your father has his own ticket, planning to meet you there and convince you to pay your grandmother a visit (she doesn’t like that you are lesbian and therefore you don’t like her).

“I don’t know,” you sigh, “because I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to make the children’s lives even more unstable. Maybe it’s best to give them a few months to adjust to the idea of us not being together.”

Gio hums in agreement, knowing she had it easy with her own co-parenting adjustment because her daughter was a baby with no recollection of her parents being a couple, much less in-love. “You’re a good mum.” She kisses your cheek and wraps you in a very needed hug. “You’ll get through this because you are stronger than a pathetic affair.”

You swear.

“What time’s our train leaving?!”

The match is a good one, and the atmosphere is enough to make you feel the slightest bit alive. Spain plays in two days, and though you have good reason to believe Alexia is going to be there, you are booking a family trip to Legoland to delay the first hand-off of many.

England win with one goal to nil, courtesy of Beth Mead’s chip. You are on your feet, cheering the entire match. One of the United executives tells you that he loves your passion and asks you if you’d take his ticket to the post-match drinks as he wants to head home for a nap. You laugh, the old Mancunian reminding you of your father, and accept. It’s just the one ticket, so you bid Gio and Anya goodbye, book a hotel for the night (comfortable with the idea that Isabela has safe hands to care for your children), and give your father a valid reason to pass up on the visit to Didsbury.

The only person at this event that you really know is Alessia Russo, after exchanging a few DMs last Christmas to wrangle a signed Manchester United jersey for Nico’s Christmas present (a gift Alexia had refused to say was from her as well).

“No kids today?” she asks with a grin, pulling you into a friendly hug.

“Didn’t manage to get them tickets,” you reply. “But now I get to drink, and you get to watch me and wish you weren’t on a nutrition plan.”

She shakes her head. “We’ve actually been instructed to celebrate the wins. Sarina Wiegman says it’s a key part of tournament success.” You look around the room, noticing every Lioness here, hair still wet from the showers and donning team-issued tracksuits, has a can of beer in their hands. Jorge Vilda could never. “Glad to see you haven’t yet become a Spain and Barcelona fan. Feeling patriotic enough to be introduced to our captain?”

Leah Williamson bears the same concentrated eyes gifted to Alexia; determination, victory, leadership.

You’re unsure if you have ever formally met her, perhaps at the Brits once. “I go with Alex? Alex Scott,” she says, as though she is trying to impress you. She takes the briefest of looks down to your hands that hang near your waist with no glass to hold (the bar has cut you off for half an hour).

You wear one ring. It is not the one with which Alexia promised you her total devotion, but it is from her all the same. An old gift – maybe from your first anniversary?

Leah doesn’t ask whether you are still married.

“I heard your son loves football?” He is obsessed with his mother, he wishes to follow her in every single thing she does. “You should bring him to our next match. I’ll get him one of those passes, and– Hey, you know what? I bet there’s a way I can get him a place as a mascot for one of the matches! Both our next ones are down south.”

You smile. “Really?”

“Yeah, course. He might be a bit young but I’m always glad to help out our little fans, and it might throw Spain off their game.” She winks, offering no further explanation, and is suddenly called away before you can request more information.

You have to admit, the idea of Nico walking (toddling) out with England makes you feel both proud and satisfied. It will be a tiny jab towards Alexia, which, honestly, is a privilege considering how she has stabbed you in the back repeatedly with a machete.

When your son’s first time on a proper football pitch is with Alessia Russo, holding her hand with wide eyes and a wider smile, you are sure Alexia has smashed the screen of whatever TV she has been studying her opponents with.

…

Spain playing England in the quarter-final feels intensely political within your family.

Alexia is in Brighton for the first time in her life, and she hates more than anything that she is not preparing herself for a match. She won’t be going through her pre-game rituals for another seven months, at least.

You tell Isabela to take the children to Alexia’s hotel, unable to put yourself in front of the wheel. Your hands have not stopped shaking since your manager texted you a screenshot of their conversation (seeing as you refuse to talk to her, not for pettiness but for fear of breaking yourself in two), and Isabela poured you a glass of wine before she left to calm your nerves.

You feel sick, and the toilet water turns red as your body rejects the rioja. Once you have wiped your mouth, you laugh at the notion that even Spanish wine is unwelcome inside of you.

“Who are you?” Alexia demands as the revolving doors of the lobby reveal her two babies with a stranger. She is quick to remove Elena from the arms of this new woman, although she is disgruntled by how comfortable her daughter seems. One of her crutches falls to the ground, Alexia not having been able to master childcare and post-surgery impairments because she has not seen the children she is supposed to care for, but she does not find it in herself to care.

“Hola, Sra. Putellas. Encantada.” Isabela holds out her hand but Alexia does not shake it, jaw clenched at the way you have gotten a Spanish-speaking nanny as though to completely erase her babies’ Catalan accents and memory of their other mother! “Me contrataron para ayudar a Y/n con los niños. Me dijeron que usted se encargaría de ellos hoy.”

“Sí, lo estoy haciendo, porque son MIS hijos.” She looks at Nico, who has been hiding shyly behind his nanny’s leg, afraid of his mother’s fierceness. Alexia softens, hoping to welcome him into her embrace, but her stupid knee won’t bend and she can’t get onto his level. Isabela reaches out to help her, or to at least steady her so that she doesn’t drop the squirming toddler she is holding, but the help is unwanted and, quite frankly, embarrassing.

Alexia’s frustration brings tears to her eyes.

She quickly blinks them back.

“¿Le gustaría que la ayudara, Sra. Putellas? Me han pagado por trabajar hoy, así que no es un proble–”

“¡No!” Alexia snaps. Silently, she curses how condescending and petty you have become. Paying the nanny in advance to taunt her for her injuries! “No. Estaré bien. Soy su madre.”

“Por supuesto, pero también está herida.” Isabela looks around the lobby for a moment. “¿Está sola?”

Alexia knows that Mapi’s parents are going to be arriving any minute now, kindly offering to help out with Nico and Elena. “Oh, we do not mind! We’d love for María to have children of her own,” they had said.

“Soy perfectamente capaz de manejarlo–”

“Isabela,” Isabela supplies.

“Isabela,” Alexia repeats. “Ahora, si ha terminado, vaya a disfrutar su día libre.”

She waits on the sofa just left of the door for Mapi’s parents, silently begging them to arrive as soon as possible. Nico is bored and would like to run around, upset that Alexia denies him his fun whenever he whines to play. Elena is tired, grumpily napping in Alexia’s lap, but that means she can’t position her knee the way the surgeons had asked her to. Isabela hadn’t meant to, but she had dumped two rucksacks of toys, snacks, and clothes onto Alexia, who still hasn’t been able to retrieve her crutch from the floor.

Close to tears and very overwhelmed, the arrival of the couple comes as a great relief. “Oh, you poor thing,” coos Mapi’s mother, a caring woman from whom her friend inherited the same quality. She kisses Alexia’s forehead and instantly takes the weight from her lap, hushing the soft whimpers Elena lets out. “Let us look after the babies. You make sure you have the tickets sorted. Have you taken your pain medication? Oh, let me take care of it for you.”

The fuss is something she has had to get used to, but she is thankful for the assistance. They wrestle Nico into his red Spain jersey, something he was not delivered in, and they ensure all three of their wards are comfortable before the stadium appears in the windshield of the taxi.

Alexia begins to get nervous.

Spain has more talent than England – always has – but they don’t have the same funding nor support. Their manager is a dickhead and the federation corrupt, and Alexia’s teammates suffer daily in a way no Lioness would be able to comprehend. She fears for their reputation, for their progression.

Her nerves increase when she sees you in the stands, in your own box of course. It seems that you see her too, but your only acknowledgement of her presence is the wave you give to your children. Alexia has to remind them sharply in Catalan that they are Spanish.

Afterwards, when Spain lost and Alexia is blaming herself for the defeat, you walk through the tunnel, following Leah’s directions that she had sent over text. You’d added her to your contacts yesterday, growing tired of Instagram DMs.

The odd thing about this area is that to your left, nothing is heard and the air hangs its head in shame, but to your right, a nation celebrates its victory. Sadly, you know you have to fetch your children from the Spain changing room before you say goodbye to the English heroines.

You knock on the door, politely. You have never been more glad that a player has not been selected for a squad. Jenni has missed the Euros due to injury, much like her partner-in-crime.

A solemn Ona Batlle, a Manchester United player who serves as a bridge between worlds in your household, opens the door, making no attempt to force a smile when she sees that it is you. You are (were) their captain’s wife; you are like family.

“Hi,” you breathe, not wanting to be the one to pierce through the silence.

Ona stands to one side and you pass.

Most of the girls are tearful, sniffling into their jerseys, heads in their hands, but no one is as distraught as Mapi. Her sobs take the fun out of winning, her devastation crushing and contagious and impossibly hard to ignore. She buries her face into Alexia’s shoulder, but it does nothing to muffle her cries.

You gulp, catching hazel eyes, understanding the plea to not make this feel worse.

You are heartbroken, and so is Mapi. For different reasons, yes, but both organs are shattered in the same way.

Alexia mutters something very quietly, secretly wishing Mapi does not let her go because this is the first time the defender has actually spoken to her since Alexia did what she did, but the blonde hair stops itching her face soon enough.

Rooted to the spot, you search the room for two smaller Spaniards, finding them both taking after Alexia, comforting the players.

“Nico, Lela, come on,” you croak, finding tears in your own eyes. “Say bye-bye to Mami.”

Their hugs and kisses are missed the moment Alexia leaves the country, and the absence of them makes Alexia crumble completely when she finds the letter from your lawyer that Alba has been hiding from her.

…

September rolls around with school, the start of your custody agreement, and the release of your new album.

Judgement Day.

For many, it confirms the split from your wife. Those pictures were never picked up by a magazine, so you have had them deleted with a baseless threat to sue for defamation.

Alexia no longer has to communicate with you through one of your employees, but any texts exchanged are few and far between. She tells you that she is renting a flat near the training centre. It has three bedrooms, but Nico and Elena share one because her mother is living with her while she recovers from her ACL. She also partially tore her meniscus, though she had hesitated to pass that news on, but everything seems to be in order and she is ahead of schedule.

You reluctantly text her whenever you leave the country, whether that is because you are flying to London for work (and to visit Leah, who you are now good friends with) or because a club opening has called and you have answered. It’s not as messy as the media makes it seem, but you agree with the articles that say you seem to drink as though it is what keeps you alive. The word ‘addict’ gets thrown around, but you are sitting in an armchair in front of your therapist before that escalates, if not for yourself then for the sake of your children.

They themselves do not understand. Nico frequently asks when Alexia will come home, though he has usually just visited her when this question pops out, and Elena throws big tantrums during the swaps. Those are done at a neutral location: the park near you. You hope the playground takes the edge off the palpable tension between you and Alexia as you sit on opposite sides of the same bench, exchanging brief updates about your shared duty until whoever is a mother for the next two weekends makes up an excuse to go.

Just before Christmas, once you have calculated that it’s technically Alexia’s turn with their children until January, you go on your biggest night-out since the days when all you were was a 2010s pop star in a girl-group. With no one to go home to and an empty house in Highgate awaiting your return, you get the closest to sleeping with someone else since before meeting Alexia. Her lips trail down your neck, the white powder on her nose rubbing onto your skin as she presses herself into you. You grope her body desperately, painfully dissatisfied by the bones and creamy skin your hands find. You are used to muscle, to strength, to power.

Not some anorexic model who calls you a MILF and hasn’t had a sober day in years.

In the end, you don’t end up sleeping with her, but it makes the headlines nonetheless. Your publicist lets them. “The world needs to see you move on, even if you aren’t,” she says. Your slight disagreement is not voiced, and social media explodes with further confirmation that you are single. A group of football fans are quick to attack you, calling you cruel for leaving Alexia when she is injured, but the thousand-person army doesn’t particularly bother you. You are doing your ex a favour by not opening up about the reason for the split, and you are both aware of that.

You spend Christmas with your parents, who are not pleased to have you moping about their house. Your father tells you that success is the best revenge. You tell him that your album has topped the charts in December, winning its battle against Christmas music.

“But that hasn’t mended a broken heart,” he is unkind enough to point out. “And neither will models, drugs, or alcohol.”

At this point in the day, you have made it through a bottle and a half of wine and a pack of Marlboro Golds. Voice hoarse from smoking and sobbing the entirety of Christmas Eve, you tell him to “fuck off” and call a taxi for yourself.

You don’t remember the destination you had typed in, but you end up at Leah Williamson’s house.

Leah is home, having returned from Milton Keynes half an hour ago, and is not really surprised by the state you are in. She supposes that she has gotten to know you well enough to realise that you are far from stable. This is the first time the English captain has seen you heartbroken, but she is unsure whether it will be the last.

…

Your tour commences the following month, with January being a fresh start to a new year. You tell Leah, who invites you out with her on NYE, that this year you won't be cheated on. It is not the comment that makes her laugh, but rather the way it slurs out of your mouth.

Barcelona feels suffocating when you arrive at the park to say goodbye to Nico and Elena. You’ll be in the States for the entire month and maybe some of February. Alexia is sure it will be fine, especially since the team has taken it upon themselves to look after the two children and help where they can. Additionally, Alexia is growing closer to one of her friends, Olga, who loves children and wanted to be a teacher before she decided on something much cooler.

Alexia has the courtesy to send Mapi and Ingrid in her place, knowing that you do not want to talk to her. You haven’t yet heard her explanation, but that does not matter. Nothing excuses what she did, and nothing will. (And with Jenni, who is no longer the godmother to Elena, the title being revoked instantly.)

“Will you miss us?” Nico asks as you kiss his soft hair, hugging him tightly. “Mami said that we have to swap every three findes so why no now?”

“Why not now?” you gently correct him. “Because I have to work. I’m going to sing in front of lots and lots of people and, maybe, write some new songs!” Your attempt to excite him crashes and burns, but you are not going to give up. “This is a secret so you can’t tell anyone, but some really, really special people want to make songs with me.”

“Who?” he pouts.

“Well, one of Mami’s favourites, Karol G. She is very nice, and she told me she has an idea for a collaboration.” Petty, yes, but also a career move. Nico’s innocence and lack of understanding about the meaning of separation means that he sees your plans as a very nice gift for Alexia. “And, let me think. Ooh, Bad Bunny – you know him, don’t you? I’m sure Pina or Patri or–”

He pulls away from your embrace, taking a step back. “Sí,” he says, sounding exactly like Alexia, “but to Mami, she no like because he says rude things.”

“Adults are allowed to say rude things,” you reply with a cheeky smile, winking at him. “Your mami says rude things all the time, but not in front of you.”

“Really?”

“Yep, but you’ll have to ask her about that.”

Alexia has hobbled through the nighttime routines, aided by Olga, who has halved the job by picking Elena and Nico up from nursery and school and watching them until Alexia’s day at the training ground had ended. Her and Olga haven’t kissed yet, but Alba has advised her sister to be quick about it if she ever intends to. Alexia is not sure she does want that, because your absence has only made how much she loves you (and how much she fucked up) even more obvious.

Their beds are on opposite sides of the room, which is technically the master bedroom – only fair, Alexia thinks, because they are having to share here but not when staying with you – and Elena is fast asleep by the time Nico is tired of the bedtime stories he has relentlessly requested. She brushes off the slight sting of his dismissal of her acting and helps him settle underneath the covers.

As usual, she presses a kiss to both cheeks and the tip of his nose, and tells him to have nice dreams and a good rest. The weekend starts tomorrow, which means he gets to join Alexia at the training centre and sit in on the sessions. Alexia is slightly jealous because she is still stuck in the gym, but as long as he is entertained, she will get over it.

“Mami, how long is a month?” asks Nico, voice small and groggy and… is that a hint of an accent? Maybe the two and a half months of Isabela’s Spanish has affected him. She will look into it.

He tugs on her jumper when she spaces out. “Sorry,” Alexia whispers. “A month is thirty days. Maybe you need to pay attention at school.” She pokes his cheek playfully, and he giggles.

“I do pay attention, I do. Thirty days is long.”

Alexia dreams of the football pitch, of the grass she has been promised she will play on before April. “It can be very long,” comes her agreement, picturing where in her recovery she will be come February. “It can also be very short.”

“I miss Mama.”

His statement, unbeknownst to him, is uncomfortably relatable.

“Thirty days will be very short. You’ll see her again soon, and, you know what? She made me promise to give you goodnight kisses from her every night! She is going to send them to me from America, and I’ll pass them onto you.”

“Really?”

“Sí,” says Alexia with pursed lips, raising her eyebrows to invite him to doubt her. He looks up at her with adoration, as if her word is law. She can only be thankful that you are merciful enough to have not turned her own children against her. You have expressed your wish to keep them from being collateral damage, and Alexia respects you for that.

“Mama said that she makes songs in LA with Karol G!”

Then again, there are other ways to be petty.

…

Touring has always exhausted you. Eat, sleep, travel, sing, in varying orders; the schedule grows repetitive and tight after the first week.

After the first show in LA, you bring a blurry face to your hotel room. You kiss her, you can’t bear to do anything more, and you let her sleep off her drugs in your bed while you take the sofa in your suite.

High on adrenaline half the time and utterly knocked-out when not, you zombie your way through the travelling, grouchily rehearsing new songs on the road, signing merchandise for your screaming fans. You get asked about your private life in a few interviews initially, but the journalists soon learn that the topic is to be avoided if they wish for you to talk to them at all.

The headlines continue to tear apart images captured of you at clubs, and magazines never seem to find the pictures of you with your children when you visit them while you make your way around Europe.

There comes a point where you look at a woman and she becomes, in the eyes of the media, your latest plaything.

Alexia is seething by the time your two-night show in Barcelona rolls around.

One day, when Nico and Elena understand the concepts of affairs and heartbreak, they will see the articles written about their mothers; the hate Alexia gets, the times she has been called a whore by fans of the same sport she devotes her life to, the stark inequality between her and her male counterparts. With these horrors of the world, they’ll see the pictures of you, pupils blown out, eyes red. Women clinging onto you that perhaps faintly resemble Alexia.

Because Alexia knows you, because she loves you, she can see that what has been labelled your ‘slay’ era is really fuelled by devastation. A disaster that she caused. It riddles her with guilt, but she doesn't know how to expel that emotion from her head without reverting to the early days of her loneliness where she ate nothing and made her sister seriously worry whether she was going to find her bleeding out in the bathtub one day. And so, with a lack of command over such a strong feeling, she decides to rage. She is furious with your irresponsibility.

“Where should we eat?” your guitarist asks with a grin as you touchdown in Barcelona. The soft murmur of Spanish and Catalan is unexpectedly comforting, the familiarity grounding. Maybe Barcelona has become your home. Maybe it never stopped being that, because home is where the heart is and, frustratingly, yours still belongs to the woman who tore it out of your chest and didn’t even have the guts to tell you about it.

“I can’t,” you reply quickly, wiping the sweat from travel off your brow with the sleeve of your turtleneck. “I promised my son I’d tuck him in while I’m in the country, and my daughter has been drawing at nursery so I’d like to collect some of the pictures and see if I can get them blown up onto canvases.”

Laughing, your crew make their way off the jet. “You know, most celebrities would pay thousands for abstract art but you get yours from a toddler.”

“She’s talented.” Mapi draws with her, you’ve been told. Elena is what makes Ingrid yearn for a ring to appear in their relationship sooner rather than later. “And take the piss all you want, but if you had had to put my kids through what I have, you’d feel the same.”

The sofa in the Putellas household (the apartment no longer inhabited by Eli, who was very glad to escape the intense atmosphere as soon as Alexia was cleared to live by herself) houses three unsettled humans of varying sizes. The biggest, Alexia, shifts on the soft, new cushions, awaiting your arrival with gulps of brewing tears and the latest set of paparazzi photos of you fresh in her mind. The boy, Nico, practically vibrates with excitement, promising himself that he will drag out this bedtime as long as possible to make up for all the others you have missed. The smallest is upset because she hasn’t fallen asleep yet, kept awake by her older brother who shakes her whenever she starts to drift off, hastily scolding her with a ‘no, Lela! Mama is coming home’.

With no key to this flat, you are forced to be buzzed up.

The anticipation builds. Nico and Alexia try to remember what you smell like, testing themselves to see if they can recall it scent for scent. Have you changed your shampoo? Alexia wonders, Do you still use the same moisturiser?

“Hi, my darlings!” you squeal as the door flies open and Nico comes hurtling into your crouched form, closely followed by his unsteady little sister. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!” You squeeze them as though you are never going to let go, and only release them from the hug when Elena begins to whine, adrenaline rush dying and tiredness overcoming her once more.

“Mama, home,” Nico says with an inaccurate finality. You spare Alexia a glance as he pulls you through the bare walls and grey decor until you reach a door with stickers up and down the white-washed wood. “Mami made me change, but you can read! Lela wants this one.” He rumages through the box of books near the children’s whiteboard (on it, the odd x’s and o’s of football tactics), pulling out a few to stack into his own pile before thrusting something you recognise very well.

“Mami reads to us in English sometimes,” he says matter-of-factly, though Alexia silently curses him from where she is standing in the doorway. “Important to know.”

You chuckle. “Mm, very important. How else would you talk to me?” Elena quietly crawls into your lap, happy to take over Nico’s bed, where you are sitting. You stroke her hair, holding her close. “Mami reads you ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’?”

He is too young to know what scepticism looks like.

“Es que hay ‘La Pequeña Oruga Glotona’.”

You refuse to look at the voice which speaks, but you nod.

“Alright, why don’t you get into bed, and then I’ll start to make my way through the mountain of books. I am absolutely all yours for tonight, my loves.”

…

Alexia’s hands slam down on the dining table, slapping against the wood with a loud bang. “Enough!” she exclaims, her voice slicing through the tense air like a knife. Her eyes blaze in fury and you shrivel, not quite sure what you have done to her. You grant her the silence she needs to continue, though her shout echoes through the shattered tranquillity like a bomb that continues to explode. “It is enough.”

“What, Alexia?”

You sound kind of… bored once you have regained your composure. Your shock is now replaced with a blank expression, and you run your eyes over your nails, examining your cuticles so that you don’t risk making eye contact with her.

“You think you can just waltz in here as if you haven’t offered yourself to the entire world and expect everything to be okay?” Her voice trembles with indignation, venom dripping from each word she spits out. “You can’t go from common slut to mother in one day!”

Nails forgotten, you square your shoulders and set your jaw. “I hadn’t realised you were the jealous type, Ale.” The nickname slips out like a poisonous dart, taunting her, wounding her. It rattles her, and you intend to shake her more. “It’s none of your business, not anymore. Deal with it – or don’t, I don’t care.”

“What kind of example are you setting for our children?” she continues, lips curling into a scornful sneer. “Kissing anything with a mouth! Like some, some hormonal teenager. And to have it all over the papers? It’s trashy! It’s embarrassing for me, because my wife has her hands down the pants of every woman she meets, pumped full of alcohol and drugs and… You, you go to these events, paid to get yourself on the front pages so that they can be mentioned in the location of the incident, and… and that’s like prostitution! Making money from your body, from sex!”

Her fists clench and she storms towards you, footsteps harsher than her bad knee can probably take, but you make no move to back down. You lift your chin up; “I don’t have to resort to prostitution for money. I have more than enough.”

“Then you do it for attention,” Alexia reasons with herself, albeit very loudly. “That is what you are, aren’t you? A slut for the cameras and the glitz and glamour of it all. So quick to jet off on tour, leaving me with our children–”

“I may be a ‘slut’ for attention, but at least I am not a whore for a woman who is not my fucking wife!” You press your hand to her chest roughly, pushing her away from you. “I’m not the one who had an affair, I’m not the one who ruined everything!”

Alexia recoils at your words, freeing herself from your searing touch before she melts. She forces her fury to its boiling point. “How dare you,” she seethes, voice cracking at the ferocity in which she forces the sentence out. “You think you can just throw my mistakes in my face?” You hold your ground. She will not intimidate you. “You think you’re so righteous, but you’re not as innocent as you pretend to be.”

It is a baseless accusation. You both know it.

“The only fact we have here is that you fucked Jenni. Our daughter’s godmother. Your ‘best friend’, my friend too! I trusted her, and I trusted you, and you took that trust and obliterated it by sleeping with her!”

Alexia wants to cut you deep, wants to give you the gory details of it all, but she hears the croak of your voice and knows you will not make it to your hotel if she tells you.

“I slept with Jenni, sure, but you have passed yourself around enough to make us even.”

“Nothing will make us ‘even’, Alexia,” you cry, meaning to sound scarier than you do. You can’t help the tears from streaming down your face, nor the hoarseness of your throat. “And I would never ever do to you what you did to me!”

You have to go on vocal rest the next day, otherwise the concert would be called off.

Alexia refuses to attend, even though most of her teammates will, instead pawning Nico and Elena off to your backstage staff and dangerously driving herself to Alba’s place.

It is one of those nights where Alba cannot leave her side for fear Alexia will choke herself to death on her tears. When the elder of the two can longer hold it all in, Alba ties her hair back with an old hair bobble so that the blonde strands don’t get in the way of her sister’s vomit.

("I don't want to live like this," Alexia says, her eyes wide and alert. Her little sister looks at her with empathy, searching, with a broken heart, for a version of a woman from the past she's not sure she knows. This Alexia is not the same.

"Of course you don’t." It's obvious. Obvious by the way she forces her existence without happiness, without company, without a smile. It's like there is no sun in Alexia's world, nor a blue sky, nor an end.

It never ends.

So, she says, "I don't want to live like this, without her, without the family I dream of every night, every waking moment. I don’t want to live, Alba. I didn’t want to live in August, and I haven’t since, and I… I do it because people rely on me." She takes in a deep, acidic breath, grimacing at the taste of bile on her tongue. “If it were just me, just Alexia”--The Ruiner, she silently adds–“I wouldn’t be here. Alba, Alba, I don’t want to live like this.”

She carries on repeating it because Alba has to understand. There can't be a possibility that Alba thinks her sister is insincere. What a lie that would be! To Alexia, she prefers death over continuing like this, with her head in the toilet and vomiting, vomiting, vomiting.

"If I had the chance, I would go back to August 2021 and never sleep with Jenni. I’d not let her kiss me, not give into it. I'm exhausted from it; from my loneliness, from the kids' questions, asking when their mother will come back home. Do you know that Nico asked me if we still loved him? If she still loves him? And why his friends have two parents and he seems to have a shell of a woman for one, and a vacant space in the king-sized bed for the other?"

"She might not want you again, however, and your imagined future may be false – it is the opposite of reality, no? If I were her, I wouldn't. You cheated on her when she only gave you love and patience and… Well, Alexia, I swear I really want to see you happy, but I just don't think she'll forgive you."

"And why not?"

Alba sighs. She places her hand on Alexia's back, moving it in circles to calm her sister down. When they were little, it was always Alexia who helped Alba. With school, with her problems, with new lovers or ones from the past. It was her responsibility to take care of her little sister, and when their father died and there were only three of them, Alexia felt that responsibility even more.

Here, roles reversed, Alba can only apply that which she has learnt from the heaving lump of flesh slumped on the chequered tiles.

"Alba," repeats Alexia, lowering her voice, relenting. "She loves me."

The younger of the two can’t help the tears that brim in her eyes, distressed in her own right. "She loves you despite your other girlfriend because she's a saint. She's a saint but, if you want her to be happy, you cannot take advantage of her," Alba warns gravely, sincerely, and correctly. Alexia lifts her head and looks at the clock on the bathroom wall. Alba's apartment is clean and trendy, just like the woman, and she has dirtied it with her presence. She remains, for the foreseeable future, Alexia, The Ruiner.

"Smartass."

"It's just the truth."

"Well, if that's the truth, I'd rather you be a liar."

Alba sighs again, more heavily, and asks Alexia to get up from the floor. If Alexia's knee hurts, she says nothing and jumps up and down. "Ay, your knee," Alba grumbles but Alexia keeps going. She keeps going and going until she can't breathe and her lungs hurt. She keeps going because she believes it will rid her of her sadness, or at least hopes so. She hasn't stopped when Alba asks her to. A loud voice breaks the silence. "What are you doing?"

"Destroying everything. If I can't be with her, I don't want to play football. I don't want to walk, or see, or talk. I just don't want to live."

To Alba, this tells her two things. One is that her sister has gone batshit crazy. The other? Well, that is the solution. It's simple, really; one sentence, and Alexia will know what she has to do.

"You need to fix this.")

Heartbreak is ugly, but Alexia’s guilt is uglier.

#woso x reader #woso #woso fanfics #barca femeni #woso imagines #fc barcelona #mapi leon #ona batlle #alexia #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #alexia putellas imagine #randombush3

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teatoptony · 5 months

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High Enough (Without the Mary Jane)

summary; 'in every other universe, gwen stacy falls for spider-man. and in every other universe, it doesn’t end well'. you don't want to be a mary jane anymore.

or, in which you were the mindy s. mcpherson to miles's prowler

pairing(s); e-1610! Miles Morales x fem!reader, e-42! Miles Morales x fem!reader (r is referred to with she/her pronouns, no physical description.)

warning(s); fem spanish terms are used ('hermosa' etc.), reader’s hand is smaller than Miles’. author can’t write action sequences for shit.

may be ooc but we haven't seen a whole lot of p!miles yet so there isn’t really much to go off of

implied/mentioned parental issues with reader, not proofread, written (mostly) at ao3 hours

a/n; according to google the sinister 6 of e42 are doc oc, vulture, electro, rhino, sandman and scorpion, although i've seen some other ppl say that the eastereggs are vulture, rhino, scorpion, sandman, shocker, kraven and electro. i'm going w the google one, maybe kraven and shocker are their own thing. also they're prolly rich aholes since their signs are on buildings n stuff, so that's what i went with.

also reader was sent to earth 42, but like, a few days before 1610 miles arrives, kind of like how gwen was sent to 1610 a week before she found miles

Miles — or, who you assumed was Miles, anyway — took you back to his place, going out of his way to avoid alleys where there weren't many people around and sticking to the bigger streets. You found it kind of weird. Back home, you and Miles used to cut through backstreets and even some sketchy buildings all the time to make it home before curfew.

You felt him steal glances at you the whole walk, and you’d be lying if you didn’t do the same.

This version of him just felt so.. different.

Once the two of you reached your destination, he let you up the stairs first before quietly calling for you to stop once you reached his floor. You hesitated for a moment on the steps. It was a higher level than Miles’s flat back home, and the building had looked a lot different from what you’d seen just half an hour ago, even if it still felt familiar. You’d chalked it up to the multiverse doing multiverse things at first, but he was starting to act a little off.

Having been around your Miles for years, you knew all his tells. You could see how his weight shifted on his feet as he unlocked the door. You could see he was overall standing straighter and more tense. You could see the hesitation before he turned the key.

Miles was lying to you. And he felt guilty.

But what were you going to do?

This universe was new to you. Sure, everything seemed just about the same, but it was all so foreign at the same time. There where skyscrapers you’d never seen before, new graffiti on the streets of the same couple people over and over again - all of whom you were sure you’d seen somewhere before but couldn’t quite grasp where. The sight of buildings blocked by yellow tape and more in the process of repair after seemingly being burned down or blown up were common in this world, like it was an active war zone or something.

You really didn’t have a choice but to follow along.

He opened the door and waved you in, closing the door rather hastily after the both of you.

You took a glance around the room. There were metal bars on the windows, to keep people out or trap them in you couldn't quite figure. There was a DJ setup near them that looked awfully familiar. Hooks hung down from the unfinished ceiling, some holding chains and others oddly shaped items haphazardly wrapped with what looked like brown lunchbag paper. Wires and ventilation just about everywhere, most of the wires leading to either monitors or gadgets you assumed were in the progress of being built. An old, beat up couch and some gym gear by the wall, an open kitchen-slash-workshop area straight ahead.

The only source of light was the neon red from the signs outside the window, and even then the farther bits of the apartment remained a dark purple hue.

Then someone came out of the other room.

“What's this?”

The hell—?

From the shadows, Aaron Davis emerged.

His beard was more grown out then you'd ever seen, and his features looked sharper, almost rougher. His shoulders seemed more broad, though maybe that was the heavy jacket he wore making him look bigger than he actually was.

“¿Tío?”

Miles had taken you around to his uncle's a couple of times, which you now realized was why you recognized this place. Aaron raised an eyebrow at you, surprise flashing across his face before it was quickly wiped out. He looked over you, taling in your appearance.

“Miles.” He asked again.

“I dunno,” the boy replied, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets and avoiding his uncle's gaze. “Just found her on the way home.”

“Found her?”

Aaron glanced at you, then back to Miles, then back to you, his eyebrows furrowed in either confusion or frustration. He finally looked back at his nephew, the two of them having a silent conversation you couldn’t read.

“…Fine.” Aaron sighed, turning around—

You felt like you were dying, or being born, or possibly both at the same time. For a split second, you were nothing but particles, your skin and bones and just about everything being ripped apart then sewn back together. Your vision was a mix between TV static and rapid fire neon colors, and it was about the same deal with your hearing (which was concerning, since you couldn't usually hear colors).

Miles had taken a step forward, letting you grab his arms to keep you from falling over as he said something you couldn’t quite hear. Aaron had whipped around so fast you wondered how it didn’t give him whiplash, fists at the ready in case he needed them.

“What was that?” Miles’s voice finally got through to you, the high-pitched screaming in your ears dying down. You blinked at him as your mind went blank.

“I don’t—” You cut yourself off. Wait, was it..? Had you just..?

“Complete cellular decay.” You recalled Miles’s countless retellings of the multiversal mess that had happened just about two years ago. “I’m glitching, aren’t I?”

“Right, and you know this because..?” Aaron asked, his hands now at his sides but not eased yet. He eyed your face as if he was expecting you to grow a third eye or something. Honestly, you couldn’t blame him.

“Okay, so, this might sound crazy,” You started, “but I’m from another dimension.

“We had something like this happen back home a while back — except, y’know, people came into our dimension rather than people from ours going somewhere else.

“The people that came, they were glitching, too. Their atoms were displaced and decaying.”

“So you’re saying,” Miles spoke up, his grip tightening around your forearms just slightly. “If you stay here too long—”

“I’ll die, yeah.” You said, the reality of the situation hitting you like a KTX. “Disintegrate, to be more accurate.”

Silence filled the flat as all three of you processed the information. Miles was frozen, his gaze fixated on the spot where your hands grabbed onto him as if he was scared you’d disappear if he looked away. Aaron crossed his arms, his eyes darting from left to right like he was reading some invisible text.

As for you, you felt unreal. Your body didn’t feel like your own anymore, your vision more like looking at the screen of a first-person shooter. Were you going to die here? You didn’t want to die yet. What would your dad think? Would he file a police report? Would Miles’s dad send out a search party to look for you? And Miles—

You hadn’t even said goodbye to him at the party.

You hadn’t said goodbye to anyone.

I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die I don’t—

“Hey,” Miles says, his voice softer than earlier, snapping you out of your spiral. His hands slide down your forearms and slip into your own, giving them a firm squeeze. “No vas a morir.”

You’re not gonna die.

“Te llevaré a casa.” The boy said, his deep brown eyes bore into yours, slowly bringing you back from feeling like you’re looking at a video game to feeling more like you’re lucid dreaming. It wasn’t a total fix, but it’s a start. “I’ll get you home, I promise.”

You took a deep breath, trying and failing to ground yourself more.

“What’s five things you hear?” Miles asked gently, tilting his head and leaning ever so slightly closer to you. You just blinked, overwhelmed with everything.

“Mi vida,” he said again. “Five things.”

You paused for a moment.

Sirens outside.

Yelling from the streets.

Chains clinking in the breeze from the open window.

Aaron shuffling around in the other room. When had he left?

The buzzing of the lights overhead.

“Good.” Miles said encouragingly. “Now, four things you see.”

Miles.

A pan on the kitchen stove.

The DJ table by the windows.

Tio Aaron pulling out the couch to make a sofa bed.

“Three things you can touch here.”

Miles.

The ground if you bent down, you guessed.

Some trinkets on the table just over there, but you’re not gonna touch that.

“Two you can smell?”

Rusted metal. There’s tons of it around; on the walls, the ceiling, tables, even on the shelves. What was that chest plate doing back there, anyway?

That pool smell, which is kinda gross since it came from the chlorine in pool water mixed with all the gross stuff that came from human bodies.

Miles smiled as you said that. “Vuelves a mí, mi sol.” He squeezed your hands again. “One thing you can taste.”

“I dunno, soda? We had a ton of it at the party.” You wiggled your fingers. It was like you were stepping into your body for the first time — nothing was a perfect fit just yet, like a pair of knitted gloves with too much room at the ends of the fingers. You’d have to get used to it again.

It’s then that Aaron called Miles over, the boy reluctantly leaving your side and following his uncle to the other room. He told you to make yourself comfortable on the couch before he went, though, so that’s exactly what you did. The spring cushions feel oddly comforting under you, the familiarity of home twisted just slightly out of proportion.

There’s really nothing to do alone here. You tapped your fingers on your leg. Thankfully, Miles and Aaron came back after just a few minutes.

The first thing the boy said to you, “I’m gonna get you home.” A firmer, more certain repetition of his promise from a minute ago, albeit there’s a bit of a strain in his voice as if it physically hurt him to say it. In a clumsy yet swift motion, he quickly leaned down and kissed your cheek before making his exit rather hurriedly.

You felt the heat rush to your face, your hand coming up almost immediately to touch the spot.

Aaron chuckled and shook his head.

“So,” he said. “You as smart as she was, too?”

You tinkered with the gauntlet of a prototype suit that Aaron had dug out of storage somewhere, the man himself working on the main body. The helmet — or was it more of a mask? It was a bit bulkier than Miles's Spider-Man mask, a bit more tech-y. Probably more similar to an Iron Man helmet, now that you think about it, albeit lower in its level of advancement — was plugged into one of the many monitors strewn about the flat.

You'd managed to pry a couple bits of information out of him for the past few hours (during which you hadn't glitched again, thankfully) in exchange for some of your own. So far you knew that this universe’s Jefferson Morales had passed away a few years ago, prompting Miles to take on the mantle of the Prowler to avenge his father’s death — the details of which he stayed frustratingly vague on — and, later on, to keep the city as safe as he could.

“Wait, wait, who’s your Spider-Man, then?”

“Who’s Spider-Man?”

You blinked in confusion. “What? You don’t have a Spider-Person?”

“What, like, a part-spider guy? Nah. Scorpion’s mostly bug though, that count?”

This dimension didn’t have a Spider-Man. That was why the city was so overrun with bad guys.

You gave him a general rundown of the whole ‘radioactive spider’ thing and moved on.

Your own variant, who was Miles’s best friend and had helped make a lot of his gear, had disappeared a while after the Prowler started taking out some bad guys that were a step above villain-of-the-week, the ones who had all sorts of shady connections. Hearing about your presumed death was a strange experience.

“We know they took her,” The older man had said, jamming his screwdriver into a faulty part of the suit. “But the cops are all in on it ever since the Cartel bought ‘em out. Declared her dead after less than 24 hours.”

Oh, speaking of, apparently there was a team of villains bringing Gotham to life in New York, Brooklyn being the heart of it all. How fun.

The Sinister Six Cartel, as the Bugel had dubbed them, was the one Aaron and Miles believed to be behind your variant’s disappearance. The two were certain that the Cartel had worked out a connection between you and the Prowler. The nail on the coffin was when they sent a body double of you in the Prowler’s direction to mess with his head just a couple months ago, complete with some sort of Face Off style mask that made it possible for the fake to look exactly like you. It was only a day or two before Miles figured out it was a setup, but it had shaken him up pretty bad.

“I thought you were another one.” He’d admitted. “But then you did the whole glitchy thing. Looked horrible, by the way, real nasty. It hurt much?”

“You have no idea.”

In return, you told him about home. You told him how Miles’s dad was up for a promotion, practically Captain already. You told him about your Miles’s art and how he made a mural of him after his death. You didn’t go into too much detail about the ‘death’ part, focusing more on the peaceful aspects since it was so clearly missing from his every day life. You couldn’t really read this Aaron Davis that well since he was more guarded than he had been back home, but you could tell he appreciated it; especially the parts about his brother.

You also told him how Miles and the other Spider-People who were sent to your dimension had worked out a solution to fix their situation, and gave him a brief summary of the whole ordeal, the details of which he texted Miles since he hadn’t given you a chance to tell him about it when he left so hastily. He said something you couldn’t quite make out as he did — you caught the words ‘lab’ and ‘property’, but that was pretty much it. He only waved it off as nothing when you asked him about it.

“How’s my dad?” You asked, pushing your hand into the gauntlet to test if it worked right. It was a near perfect fit, which made you wonder who exactly it was for, since Miles’s hand was bigger than yours. “Is he doing okay? After the whole ‘declared dead’ thing?”

“He’s holding up, just like the rest of us,” Aaron replied, checking on the monitor. “Your mom — her mom’s been sticking around. Grief brings people together and all that. They’re trying therapy.”

A weird feeling bubbled up inside. While it was good to know at least one version of your parents were trying to reconcile, it bothered you that your absence had prompted it. Was that what was happening right now back home? Had your disappearance magically brought your parents back together? Had it even been long enough for that to happen, or did time flow equally throughout the multiverse?

…

Would it be better for them if you just didn’t go back at all?

“Oh.” You said, nodding slightly as you flexed and wiggled your fingers in the gauntlet, watching the way it moved. It was a lot thinner than the claws that adorned the Prowler’s hands from what you’d spotted here and there in the flat, built to be stealthier in the way it functioned. There were no clunks or clinks, just soft whirring noises that sounded almost like a cat’s purr. “That’s good, I guess.”

It was worse this time around, which you didn’t even know was possible. You felt yourself being split in a billion different directions, parts of you re-atomizing not quite in the right places. You’d never known the feeling of having space between where all your joints were supposed to connect, but now you did, and it honestly made you want to die. Not really. Well…

Miles came back sometime before dawn. You heard the door opening slowly, almost like he was trying not to wake his parents up as he was sneaking in past curfew. Not that he used the door ever since he could climb walls, but still.

He crept into his uncle’s flat, even leaving his shoes at the door so he wouldn’t make too much noise. He was making his way to the other room when he looked at you on the couch, only to flinch in surprise when he saw your eyes were open.

“¿Qué haces despierto?” He whispered, his shoulders tenser than earlier from the split second of adrenaline. “It’s late.”

“What are you doing that you have to sneak in?” You whispered back. The boy just shrugged.

“Oh, you know…” He trailed off, looking around to avoid your questioning gaze. “…Stuff.”

You rolled your eyes. “That has gotta be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

Miles huffed, shuffling over to you and sitting down on the floor in front of the couch, facing you. “Yeah, well, I asked you first. Why’re you up, hermosa?”

You sighed. “Can’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know, the thought of my impending doom, maybe.”

A couple beats passed by without a word from either of you, a bit of awkwardness hanging in the air, though it was accompanied by a familiar sense of comfort.

“Do you trust me?” Miles asked, his hand reaching out to gently grab a corner of the blanket draped over you.

“Probably.” You replied. You hadn’t known him long enough to trust him just yet, as much as you wanted to. The corners of his lips tilted up just a bit in an almost smile.

“Then trust that I’ll do whatever it takes to get you home.” He said. “I already lost you once, I’m not letting that happen again.”

The next day was pretty uneventful. For the most part, anyway, if you don’t count the random glitching throughout. You were advised heavily against going outside since the Cartel had eyes everywhere, so your area of activity was limited to the flat. Miles had evidently snuck back out after your little talk the night before, which made you feel a tinge disappointed since you wanted to get to know him better. Fortunately, Aaron said you could help with the suit again.

The TV played in the background as you tapped on the keyboard, giving the helmet a few final touch-ups as the sun set outside the window. J. Jonah Jameson jabbered on about this week’s biggest disasters and lamented about how ‘if only there was a hero to save this city’, which made you snort.

“He’s gonna switch up real quick if a hero does show up,” You remarked to Aaron, who looked at you questioningly. “The guy hates Spider-Man back home.”

“What, Jameson?” He said, raising an eyebrow. “Nah, he’s the biggest Captain America fanboy out there. Loves heroes an’ all that.”

He thought for a moment. “Pretty sure Miles saw him at Comicon that one time too.”

“What’s a Comicon?”

Unfortunately, you never got the answer as you heard the lock on the door slide open. You spun around in your chair to greet Miles as you knew he was supposed to be coming by sometime in the evening, but your friendly smile quickly faded as his expression turned to one of shock, catching a glimpse of what the two of you were working on.

The boy froze as he stared, wide-eyed, at the suit. “Tio,” He said, looking at Aaron as he clenched his jaw. “What’s that doing out?”

“She needs a suit.” The older man answered simply.

“What?” Both you and Miles asked, though you could tell it was for vastly different reasons.

“We need to get into Alchemax to get her home, and we can’t do that unless she has protection.”

“Which is why I came here to make a plan!” Miles shouted, his hands moving animatedly, the way your Miles's always did when he got upset. “Eso, eso no le pertenece. ¡No es para ella!”

They had a back and forth as the pieces came together as to why Miles was so upset.

The suit was supposed to be for you.

His you.

You were, essentially, fixing up a dead girl's clothes to wear.

“The Cartel isn't stupid, Miles,” Aaron tried to make the boy see his point. “Even if we somehow made a distraction big enough for the big ones to leave base, there's still gonna be someone left to guard it. Would you be able to live with yourself if she got hurt? Or worse—”

“Don't.” Miles's nails dug into his palms, leaving dark cresent moons in their wake. Aaron sighed.

“If she got hurt, you'd feel like that's on you. If you got hurt protecting her 'cause she doesn't have anything to protect herelf with, then I'd feel like that's on me.” He said, his features softening as he reasoned with his nephew. “This is the best bet.”

“We could build her a new suit—”

“And take what? Couple days? A week? Two weeks?”

He glanced at you, Miles following his gaze towards you as well. You knew what was implied. The only people you knew this happened to had gone maybe over a week before the glitching became a real problem, and they were superhuman. Who knew how long you had?

“She can wear mine. We have a ton of old ones, I'll just take one of those—”

“I'm not gonna let you get hurt for her, kid.”

“Don't call me that.”

They went back and forth for a while, and eventually Miles went to the other room to cool off and think things through. Aaron sighed, wiping a hand across his face.

“No offense.” He said to you.

“None taken.” You replied, not really knowing what to do. It felt wrong for you to be tinkering with something that was so clearly not meant for you, even if it was for a variant of yourself.

You could hear Miles pacing the other room, muttering to himself.

“Maybe I could...” You trailed off.

“You could try talking him into it,” He suggested. “He'll listen to you more than me right now.”

“...Should I, though?” You couldn't even begin to imagine what Miles was feeling. All this multiverse shit was too damn complicated.

“Look, kid, I know it's weird.” Aaron said, shoulders sagging just a bit. “But this—” he pointed to the suit— “is the best way to make sure no one gets hurt. Trust me.”

There was something he wasn't telling you, but he didn't have to for you to know what it was. Miles thought you were alive, somewhere out there. You knew it was entirely possible that he blamed himself for your disappearance, as it was your own version of him's go-to for anything and everything that went wrong. The shadows under his eyes, that look whenever he saw you... you wondered how many nights he'd spent outside, looking for some trace of you, a new lead to follow. Especially since your arrival.

Aaron thought this was the best chance Miles would ever get to let go of you. To get some sort of closure by sending you home.

“…I'll try.” You finally agreed, getting up from your seat and shuffling to the other room. You hesitated before going in, but the lack of a door made it awkward to linger, so you just bit the bullet and walked inside.

The room in question was more of a faux-veranda (which explained the no-door thing); a long, narrow space separated from the main living area by a sheet of drywall, with one of the wider walls filled with shelves of CDs and albums and the other decorated sparingly with old band and movie posters along with Miles-brand stickers.

“So...” You said, fiddling with your hands as you took a look around the area. You gestured at one of the stickers on the wall. “Did you make that?”

Slowing to a stop to face you, Miles nodded, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket.

“Cool.”

You both stood there in silence for a moment, you working out what to say and Miles trying to come up with some other solution to the problem. The boy had an unhealthy obsession, that much he knew, but he just couldn't bring himself to let go of it. Not when you could be out there, just waiting for him to find you.

“I don't want to push you,” You started hesitantly. “But.. I think your tìo may be right.”

“I know that.” He looked at his feet as if the dirt on his shoes was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world, the sight of him reminisent of a little kid getting scolded by his mother. “I know that.”

“I can't say I understand.. whatever's going through your head right now,” You said, taking a step towards him. “But he just wants what's best for you.”

“What's best for me is finding—” He cut himself off when his eyes met yours, frustration and confusion and stubbornness and sadness and who knows what else all mixing into a big mish-mash of conflicting thoughts inside of him. He clenched his fists, tilting his head up as he tried to think clearly. To his dismay, his throat closed up, the familiar sting of tears pricking at his eyes.

“I need to find her.” He muttered, putting a hand over his eyes in an attempt to stop his tears from falling. It didn't work. “I need to find you.”

“And you will.” You were sure of it. Aaron and Miles were both so sure that their you was alive... she had to be. “But right now? Right now, I need you to help me out.”

He looked at you, his gaze almost spaced out for a moment. You wondered if he saw her in you — if she had the same haircut, the same eyes, the same accent...

You could tell he was frustrated by the way that the scrunch above his nose wouldn’t go away. Hesitantly, you reached out, wiping away the tracks stray tears had left on his cheeks. He stiffened for a moment.

“...Fine.” He finally muttered, a hand coming up to grab your arm, though he seemed unsure if he wanted to push it away or pull it closer. So he just held it in place, his thumb brushing over the inside of your wrist, the edge of your palm. His posture relaxed, just a bit. “Okay.”

Two days later, it wasn't too dark when the plan set into action.

Security at Alchemax — once belonging to Kingpin, now in posession of the Sinister Six Cartel — was thinnest sometime around six to seven pm, when dinner breaks, shift changes and the checkout of regular scientists were prominent.

Miles and Aaron had each set up time bombs at multiple smaller warehouses the Cartel used for storage, each coordinated to go off within minutes of each other. With little to no heroes or police in the way, the Cartel had no reason to keep their lesser important stocks well-guarded, which made it easy to sneak explosives into some of the shipments, support beams and pipes.

Once the explosions were set off, Aaron would use some rip-off Mysterio tech to make projections of some new vigilante gang, with each fake member leading the forces of the Cartel away from Alchemax. During this went on, Miles would sneak you in and to the Super Collider (which, surprisingly, had not been scrapped since its change of ownership) through the vents—

“Wait, wait, isn’t there like, a tunnel that can get us directly to the Collider?” You’d asked, remembering what Miles had told you when he first told you how he became Spider-Man.

“It got sealed off.” Aaron had said. “Some sort of supercharged electromagnetic thing. They did that with all the major underground entry points. Can’t shut it off without blacking out half of Brooklyn.”

“Or getting fried.” Miles had said. “The generators powering each point are all hooked up together a single system, como una mente colmena. You attack one of ‘em directly, all the others shoot a billion bolts of energy into you. And we don’t have time to hack into and get past the firewall to shut the thing down.”

—which you would navigate by memorizing a blueprint of Alchemax that had been conveniently leaked in a mass Cartel server leak a couple months ago. Miles would then plug in the goober he, Aaron and you had made using information gathered via Aaron's 'friends', and send you home.

It was a simple mission. Maybe a bit too simple, but you didn't really have much a choice when you were on a time crunch with limited information. Besides, Occam's razor.

“Copy?” Aaron's voice asked from your earpiece.

“Copy.” You answered, followed by Miles from his own communicator.

“A-6 is a go in 3.. 2...”

Boom.

A couple blocks away, a cloud of dust shot into the air. The building you and Miles were on the roof of shivered slightly as storage unit A-6 blew up.

“A-27.”

Boom.

“C-15.”

Boom.

From your vantage point, you had a clear view of what was going on at Alchemax without the risk of anyone down there catching a glimpse of you. You could see the non-combat scientists scrambling to get to their cars and the armed guards being led by weirdly dressed villains in the direction of the explosions. Although you supposed you weren't quite qualified to comment on the 'weirdly dressed' part at the moment, since you and Miles weren't much better in your respective suits.

Speaking of, Miles hadn't talked much ever since he first saw you wearing the suit. His responses were short if he even gave one, although you could feel him sneaking glances at you when he thought you weren't looking.

Miles fixed the gauntlet on his hand one last time before shuffling closer to you. “Ready?”

His voice sounded strange to you, his actual voice coming through your earpiece overlapping with the voice coming through his modulator.

“Mhm.”

“Going in.”

You hooked your arms around his shoulders and his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you tight as a grapple shot out of his gauntlet. He used it almost exactly like how Miles used his webshooters, although his actions were a bit more... forceful? Rougher around the edges, if that made sense.

As your feet left solid concrete, the city sped by underneath the both of you, a pretty blend of neon and gray. Your suit prevented you from actually feeling the air whipping by, but a fraction of the wind managed to seep through the cracks, sending a chill down your spine as your stomach dropped at the sudden decline.

For a moment, gravity seemed to disappear. The laws of physics no longer felt like they effected you in any meaningful way. Anything and everything that had been weighing down on you — this whole situation, Miles, demanding schoolwork at Visions, your parents and their myriad of problems — no longer held you down.

It was exhilarating.

Your 'flight', so to speak, was over almost as soon as it started. You tucked your legs as you reached the roof of the Alchemax building, separating from Miles and rolling to lessen the impact. Surprisingly, the move came quite naturally to you, even without practice. You chalked it off as something you'd learned when you were a toddler, when your mom used to sign you up for all sorts of extracurriculars. You were pretty sure martial arts or something had been one of them; maybe you'd learned it there.

Your heart pounded as the sudden rush of adrenaline faded away, and you found yourself wishing it didn't. The thrill was addicting, as was the freedom that came with it. It was like a rollercoaster, or watching How to Train Your Dragon in 4D for the first time, only a hundred times better.

Miles had never taken you swinging. He'd never exactly told you why, always brushing off your request with something like a 'maybe later' or 'I can't right now', but you knew why.

Swinging together was a him and Gwen thing.

And you were fine with that.

What, like you were gonna be jealous about something as small as that? Pfft. No way. Nope. Nada.

“¿Estás bien?” Miles asked, pulling you out of your thoughts. You nodded in confirmation.

The two of you pried open a vent using the gloves of your suit, which was easier than you’d expected it to be. To your surprise, the claws that extended from them were very useful.

“We’re in.” You muttered as you crawled into the duct, hoping Aaron wasn’t having any trouble on his end. He’d been awful quiet… Then again, no news is good news on a mission, right?

Miles crawled in after you. “You remember the way?”

“Yeah.”

Together you made your way to the underground levels of the building, miraculously avoiding any possible dead ends or mouse traps. That musty smell of mold and concrete reached your senses as you reached the deeper parts.

There weren’t many people at the Super Collider, thanks to the diversion and timing. Miles gestured for you to stay put as he swiftly dropped out of the vents, knocking out the few guards there one by one with relative ease. It was strange seeing him fight; so similar to yet completely different from him. You were doing as told and observing from the vents until you saw one of the last three people — a scientist, by the looks of it — sneaking up on Miles from behind while he was preoccupied with the two other guards.

You quickly dropped down from your spot, landing behind the guard and catching him by surprise as he whirled around with his weird-techy-science gun. Dropping to the ground, you swept your leg under his, toppling him over and knocking the weapon out of his hands. You were about to knock him out when—

“Peter Parker?”

Are you kidding me?

You were certain it was him. This Peter was scrawnier, his hair more sandy blond than Peter Parker’s back home (before he passed, anyway), and he wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that perched awkwardly on his slightly crooked nose. But the ID that read ‘Peter Parker’ in big bold letters around his neck was a pretty solid indicator.

“…Yes?” He almost squeaked out.

Meanwhile, Miles had dealt with the two guards, stepping over them to get to the console. “Sácalo y entra ahí.” He called, fumbling a little as he tried to figure out which buttons to push to fire up the Collider.

“We have a bit of a situation..” You said, pulling Peter up by his arm and dragging him to the console as well.

You gave him a hushed explanation of your unwillingness to hurt the guy, and how you believed he was genuinely a good person. After all, this universe was almost the same as yours, right? Peter Parker couldn’t be that different here…

“And besides, he probably knows how to work this thing. It’d be helpful.”

Miles sighed. “…Fine, I won’t knock him out,” He agreed. Turning to Peter, he asked, “How do you start the Collider?”

Peter gulped, everything in his body language screaming ‘I want to run away’. “You- you need codes,” He stammered out. “Approval codes, from—”

“Don’t care.” Miles cut him off, giving him a brief glance at the goober. “Just start it. ¿Lo pilla?”

Peter nodded hastily and got to work, pressing buttons and switching levers as you made your way down to the Super Collider. There was a catwalk that ran from one side of the machine to the other, connecting the two mechanisms. If you got to the middle of it, you could jump off and into the portal once the Collider was at full output. Sure enough, its huge metal plates clinked and clattered as they slowly sprung to life.

This was it. You were finally going home.

Just then, you heard a thunk along with some choice words in Spanish, and looked over to the source to see Peter out cold on the ground.

“He got to the panic button!” Miles said, scowling to himself as he plugged in the goober, praying that this plan would work out in the next minute or so. Bubble-like particles appeared at the two points of the machine that faced each other, the noise it emitted now making it so that you could only properly make out what Miles was saying through your earpiece.

The Collider whirred and sputtered as the bubbles grew bigger and brighter, eventually bursting into two beams of light that met each other in the middle, creating one big sphere with a bunch of little bubbles going in and out of it and surrounding it. The sphere grew larger and larger until it collapsed in on itself, sprouting thin, curvy lines.

The thing grew bigger and bigger until it was about the size of a person, you could feel it starting to pull you in. You just had to wait for Miles’s go ahead—

Ow.

What the hell?

You were suddenly sprawled on the ground, something having tackled you at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. That something — or rather, someone — skid to a halt just a few feet away from you, dragging a hand across the tiled floor and leaving… scratch marks?

Scrambling to your feet, you crouched in a defensive stance as you looked over the newcomer.

There wasn’t a single inch of skin showing, their suit covering the whole of their person. The suit in question was mostly white, with some gray sprinkled in here and there. It reminded you of Eve from Wall-E or a Stormtrooper, maybe a mix of both. Strangely enough, the mask was just a blank slate; a sleek, white panel with no features or details, kind of like one of those LED face masks.

Overall it was kind of… boring? It didn’t inspire fear nor did it seem very imposing or something of the sort, which you’d think would be a priority for a villain organization. If anything it was bland, the only thing that stood out from the suit being its hands which donned gauntlets that looked similar to yours, but slimmer and more polished, more accurately described as gloves rather than gauntlets. They had claws just like yours, albeit they looked sharper, a bit more gnarled.

“Miles?” You called, your heartbeat quickening. “What’s going on?”

You heard a grunt from his end. You didn’t look to see what was happening, not daring to take your eyes off of your attacker, but you guessed that backup from Peter’s panic signal had arrived.

“What’s going on?” Aaron echoed, his voice slightly fuzzy. Before you could answer, your attacker lunged. You managed to doge a full on body slam, but they grabbed your arm instead, using it to flip you over their body and knocking the wind out of you.

You writhed as you hit the ground, managing to rip your arm out of their grasp and landing a kick on their ankle, causing them to stumble. You took the opportunity to get up and put some distance between the two of you, though you didn’t get far before the lunatic started chasing you. They jumped at you again but you turned around at the last second, and as you were pushed back with their claws digging into your shoulders you kicked both of your legs out into their stomach just as your back hit the ground, sending them straight over your head.

“Tìo, get your nephew, now!” You shouted, rolling away just in time to avoid a punch that landed on the floor where your head had been just a second ago. “It all went to shit, get him out!”

The pull from the Collider was getting stronger, tiny scraps like bolts and papers flying through the air and towards the beam of light. You raced back to the catwalk but were once again stopped by the 29th century Stormtrooper. You yelped as you felt something grab the back of your neck, sharp claws piercing through your suit and digging into your skin as your head was thrown harshly against a metal beam.

And just like that, you were on the ground. Again. What was this, like, the third time? Fourth? Great. Just fantastic.

I’m not even supposed to be here, you thought, grabbing at your opponent’s wrists as their hands wrapped around your neck, slowly choking you. They were stronger than you were, faster, clearly more skilled. What were you thinking? You’re not a fighter — you couldn’t beat them, not like this.

Why was the universe so intent on making you miserable? You were just trying to get home, maybe not die. Not dying would be nice. But no. You couldn’t have nice things, could you? Not your own life, not Miles, your own damn parents were happier in a reality where you weren’t in the picture—

A sudden surge of anger made you lash out. The universe could go fuck itself. You weren’t dying like this. Not when your ticket home was right in front of you.

Your gauntlet caught your attacker’s mask, knocking it off.

You knew that face.

It was the same face that looked back at you every time you looked at a mirror.

Well, not exactly, you supposed. There was a certain roughness in her features, the same as how Miles looked different from Miles. But you’d know those eyes anywhere. But they were… what’s the word, fuzzy? Unfocused? It was like her body was on autopilot while her brain was off in Hawaii or something.

The thing you did next could’ve won you the prize for ‘smartest dumb decision of the year’.

In all your oxygen-deprivated brilliance, you retracted your mask.

It might shake her, was your reasoning. It would confuse anyone to see a doppelgänger in a fight.

Or, you know, it could go totally wrong and she could punch your face in. But you were already getting choked, so, what was there to lose?

And it worked.

Her eyes shifted back into focus as her grip slackened, and you quickly shoved her — or is it you? yourself? — off, gasping for air. You could vaguely make out the outline of a giant scorpion-guy going one-on-one with Miles, who seemed to be holding out pretty well. He was favoring his left hand though, when usually he used his right.

“I— wha—? Where—” You heard from your left. Your alternate universe counterpart looked around the lab, her eyes wide and movements jerky like a wild animal on drugs.

You were about to say something when a loud buzzing came through your comm, which had evidently been damaged in the whole head-beam connection thing. Miles’s voice came through in broken pieces.

“Col— get..t— ov-rload—”

The Collider. The goober could only force an incomplete system to run for so long. Your time was up.

Wonderful.

A flash of blinding light came from the machine as it malfunctioned. The goober could only make an incomplete system work for so long. You were just able to get your helmet back on before everyone in the vicinity was pushed back in an explosion. Was that Aaron—?

After your temporary blindness wore off, you made out the aftermath, a high-pitched ringing in your ear as you dazedly looked around. The glass that separated the control area from the Collider had been shattered, the Scorpion twitching as he tried to get to his feet — did he have feet? Now’s really not the time — There was no sign of Miles or Aaron anywhere, which was either very good or very bad. You decided to believe it was the former for your own sake. A short distance away from you was another you, that one unconscious but still breathing, from the looks of it.

Grabbing your variant, you ripped open a vent on the wall before the Scorpion could take notice of either of you, shoving her in before following suit and placing the vent cover back on. You had to get out of here. Fast.

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