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I just wanna be nice to Patrick when he has no one left. When he doesn’t know what kindness is anymore. When he doesn’t think he deserves it. I wanna be nice to him even though he takes advantage of it, even though he’ll try to take and take until there’s nothing left to give. Until he finally feels safe enough to let me in and give it all back.

Pink in the Night

an: in honor of @blastzachilles birthday (i love you), @glassmermaids comeback (i missed you), and international women's day (go us). it's short but hopefully sweet because i love her so

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The rain hitting the roof above your head is taunting. A million little taunts. Each sound of watery, dull impact is a reminder that your skin is crawling to the point it may very well come off. No amount of tossing and turning, pressure to a new spot on your body, is undoing that nauseating tingly sensation. Stupid. You were, are, so, so incredibly stupid. 

She’s still here, sitting at your desk, like she hopes to forget by surrounding herself in familiarity. Your room was safe. Your room was a place of shared secrets and shoulders to cry on. Your room wasn’t the party you’d just left in some frat house. You hadn’t kissed her here. You don’t understand why she had come, much less why she still hadn’t left. A place she spends her nights where she can’t sleep, a welcome distraction from her exhaustion. Those night visits have grown quite frequent. She didn’t have to be here to watch you wallow. She knows that better than anyone. She’s above letting other people’s problems become her own. 

You told her you were drunk, which is probably why she’d still insisted on walking you home after everything. Her hair was damp to prove it, the hood of her sweatshirt still warming your cheeks. Still sweet to you. Just to you. Why you? Because you weren’t drunk. You had never been so clear-headed in all your life. It was still stupid, a moment of false confidence aided by flashing blue lights and glittery eyeshadow on honey brown skin. It wasn’t the grandiose gesture she deserved. It wasn’t a bouquet of white lilies, her flower of choice, it wasn’t candlelit dinner at the fancy steak place she wants to try, but you can’t afford, it wasn’t the carefully crafted note that’s folded into the drawer of the very desk she now sits at. It’s been sitting there for months, waiting for its turn under her eyes, the way most things do. Everyone waits to be beheld by Tashi, because it feels like being looked at by something divine. Even when scrutinizing, or cruel, there’s an otherworldliness to her. And here she is, a goddess watching her fake drunk friend roll around like a petulant child. A goddess who has to pick up her sweatshirt off of old, dorm room carpet when her hoodie is thrown there.

You lift your head just off your pillow, enough to strain your neck, enough to meet her eyes should she choose to reward you with such a thing. She runs her tongue over her bottom lip for a moment, sticky with gloss she hadn’t put there. Cherry-flavored gloss that she knows you gave her. She smiles, lifts her fingers to her lips to feel it. She wants to seal it to her skin. 

And even if she’s smiling, looking at you as she does so, you’re mortified. You’re never going to forget how she’d looked at you, pushing on your chest to recreate the space that you’d so unjustly taken from between your two bodies. She looked shocked, she looked horrified. Scariest of all, she looked disappointed. She’d never looked at you that way. And she was disappointed, yes, because she hadn’t expected it. Because she hadn’t made the move she was convinced she’d get the shot at. Because she hadn’t touched you when she got the chance. You tasted like cherry lip gloss and the Sprite you’d just tasted. You tasted like a diner Shirley Temple, how cliche. And you smelled like lavender and warm nights in and sex and soft skin and she didn’t even let it happen.

Her eyes shine against the glow of lampposts and the moon, aligned with it just so she shines like the light of it came from within her. Aligned with the celestial, aligned with the feminine, glittering and soft and sharp and witty. Sweet words, taut muscles, long, elegant frame. You admired her body not with hunger, necessarily, but with desire. And there’s a difference, not necessarily in intent, but the way it feels. Because each time she turns her head and more of her collarbone becomes visible, the dip of it shallow, the appearance of thin lines of muscle in her neck, is just another thing to worship. Another place to kiss. Another spot to let her know is well loved. Appreciated. Doing a wonderful job in keeping her whole. You love each and every part of herself she’d given you the honor of seeing. The secrets that you held tenderly in your palms, the insecurities you’d whisper praises into her skin to undo, the memories of smaller things in a world that seemed much bigger, missing teeth, frizzy hair, and you will sing a requiem to her past self. You love her, you love her, you love her. 

She’s still kneeling on that awful, scratchy carpet, the fabric of her poor sweatshirt in hand, and would hate yourself for making tonight one you regret entirely. You’d kissed her once already, just an hour ago, and she can already know what to expect. But you did it wrong. You did it without any of the soft hands, honeyed praise, fluttering lashes, and absolutely palpable adoration that she deserves. Not deserves, requires. It’s an unwritten rule, but one everyone knows is there. She allows you that second chance, long fingers to tear tracked cheeks, yours ghosting over every part you can reach. The position is uncomfortable, awkward, but you can manage. You will take any amount of pain the world can throw at you if you can bask in her presence as a result. You will continue to try and undo the nonexistent damage you’d done, again and again and again. Even when she’s no longer kissing you back, just giggling at the sensation of warm, soft affection to heated skin, you will continue to try. The rain is rhythmically tapping against the roof with each beat of your heart, each inhale and exhale, each touch of her body to yours. She doesn’t leave that night, and you get to watch her, bare-faced and clad in just undergarments, as she lays in your bed. She sleeps easily, peacefully, close but not atop you. She loves you, she loves you, she loves you, and that victory tastes like cherry lip gloss.

I Could Be a Good Mother

or: What the process to Lily was

an: thank you to all beta readers for the first paragraph. not proof read. comments always appreciated. love you all.

warnings for mentions of pregnancy loss

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When she was young, the plan was to name her daughter something exciting. Something reminiscent of herself. She contemplated Natasha, of course, the name her parents had originally planned on placing on her. Identifying herself as Natasha, after living so long under her actual name, felt wrong now, but she wouldn’t mind giving a piece of what could’ve been to her future daughter. She always wondered what made Tashi come about, a heat of the moment decision on her mother’s part. When she asked, tugging at the hem of her mother’s shirt as she read a novel too dense for a girl of Tashi’s age, the response was plain. Because she just knew. She gazed down at a small body, smaller than even now, a head of soft, curling hair, and eyes as warm as melted chocolate, and knew her daughter’s name. She placed it upon her with a kiss to her forehead, and there she was. Tashi Duncan. Her mother smiled down at the girl, so big and so small all at once, and said she’d know, too, when the time came. She’d know, just like she had. Like mother , like daughter. And when daughter became mother all her own, the chain would continue to grow. 

When she was just a bit older, smiling with missing front teeth, not whole but feeling complete, she wanted to name her daughter Billie. Billie who she read yellowed biographies on her knees in the library, leaning against the shelves. Billie who ran the court like it was hers to own, and as far as Tashi was concerned, she did. Billie, who her parents reluctantly let her admire, but told her that even if she was a great player, one of the greatest, she wasn’t necessarily someone to be admired. Tashi didn’t quite understand it at the time, being young enough to understand when subtext was present, but not old enough to decipher the code behind a restless hand toying with a cross necklace. Nevertheless, as long as Tashi was passionate about tennis, she’d be passionate about Billie Jean King. She always thought it funny, the queen of tennis with ‘king’ for a last name. Maybe it was intentional irony on the universe’s part, something to rub men’s noses in. Or maybe she was both a king and a queen in her own right. Tashi wanted that. She wanted a court named in her honor, because for all the world knew, tennis had been reinvented under her capable hands. She wanted the world to watch as the courts molded beneath her feet like clay, precise, aggressive, and see the potential for what the sport could be. Her daughter, with this name, might gain that power through it. Be a king and a queen all the same. 

At her confirmation, a knee-length skirt bursting around her like a blooming flower, beaming with pride, she decided her daughter’s name would be Joan. Joan after her chosen saint, Joan of Arc. It felt appropriate for her. Fitting to choose a name of someone so dauntless, so unmistakably determined to stick by her beliefs. Even at twelve, everyone knew that Tashi was not a girl, but a force of nature. She functioned more like the wind did than a person, graceful and elegant in its lightest forms, biting and unforgiving at its harshest. She wanted to be a dichotomy. The less people understood, the more she could work against another person without their realizing, on the court and off it, if need be. She found herself imagining, just for a moment, that the beaming faces of proud aunts, uncles, cousins, even strangers, were watching her burn at the stake, just as her namesake of sorts had, and she liked to think that it was a rite of passage to undergo something so painful. It was what made Joan of Arc the saint she now is, was it not? Perhaps to become something, the present you, the good in you, had to die. Maybe that’s what makes a person matter. So, she hoped to change. She hoped to leave old her behind. And when she stepped down to greet family, kiss cheeks and shake hands, and people asked her who her role model is, she felt her hands fidget with the golden cross settled on her sternum when she said Billie Jean King. Her grandmother, warm and soft with old age, took her by the hand that day and thanked her. Thanked her for becoming a woman of God, as she was intended to do. For being a great future wife and mother. She didn’t like the lack of ‘tennis player’ in that list, but it would have to do. After all, it’s what she was made for. 

After Patrick, after her knee, she thinks she knows what Joan of Arc felt like when she looked down from heaven. She had to die to become something. What she had become, she wasn’t sure of. A coach, yes, and Art’s coach no less, but what else? She hoped that by falling from grace, she would land on some other variation of it. A fall from one pillowy, cushioned world to another. She tried, really, not to hate him for it. His successes that should have been hers, and they were in a way. She’d liked that after all, his malleability. He was becoming her. He was pressed and folded into serving with the power of her muscles and winning with the ease of a body which knew nothing but victory. They were her victories if he was her. But, when all is said and done, and she sits in bed while he sleeps, she knows he loves him more than she resents him. She loves that he stayed, despite no longer being the Tashi he’d met at that Adidas party. She loves that he holds her up, even when she lies and says she needs no support. She loves that in all his softness, he could love something so cold as her. She felt no fear when he proposed, because she wanted it to happen, and that meant he’d want it, too. And she wanted that daughter she’d dreamed of as a girl. She wanted her Joan to have an intellect like her own and a tenderness like her father. She wanted flowing brown hair and eyes that crinkle at their corners when they lift with a smile. She wanted a daughter, so Art would want one, too. 

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When they discussed it the first time, her ring felt heavier. She knew he wanted a family, that much was clear. He was more obvious than she’d been, all lingering eyes on small children and brushes of hands against tiny clothing. He never addressed it outwardly, not directly the way she does, but he showed his desire in his own way. He nearly cried when she asked him, and if she hadn't been smart enough to specify that she meant after the wedding, he would’ve begged her to start right away. He needed to be a father the same way she needed to be a mother. He needed to see himself create something worthwhile, he needed to know that he’d leave something beautiful behind when there was nothing left for his body to give. Tashi needed something, someone, to stare at her with the wonder that she felt from the stands as a teen. She wanted to know her life hadn’t amounted to a ‘should’ve been’, an unhappy accident, an act of God. She needed something tangible to place her love on, and just her love on. No living vicariously. No resentment. He wiped his eyes and kissed her like he had never been more in love with her than in that moment, and things felt simple. No arguments, no questioning, not a lick of concern for the future. She was going to get her daughter, her Joan, and she was going to be the most wonderful thing the world would ever know.

Her ring, the larger, newer one of the two, weighed heavy on her hand as she rolled her fingers in little waves against the marble sink. Two minutes. Two minutes that she hardly breathed for. They’d been trying and trying for months. Months of intimacy as a means to an end, rather than based on desire. Months and months and nothing seemed to stick. She felt sick each time she felt the telltale nauseating warmth of blood between her legs, the sharp ache of a cramp, like a mace swung at her insides. She felt sick when she knew she wasn’t doing the one thing she was put here for. Each time she spoke about it to her mother, she’d just sigh through the speaker of the phone, say that everything happens for a reason. That God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers, and it’d only make her victory that much more deserved. She felt no desire to be strong anymore. She hoped to be weak so that things became easier. But two minutes was up, and when she flipped the small plastic figure over in its place, two red lines down its center, she practically kissed the ground she collapsed to. Art found her there, attentive even from the other room, with her shoulders heaving and her back arched in on itself, as if shielding herself from the world. When he sees the positive test, he folds himself into the same position. He might just cry harder.

Imagine her shock when the screen was flipped her way and she saw three little shapes. Not one, but three. Three little girls. They had to be. The nurse had crinkled her nose when she said so, said it was still far too early to tell, but she knew. Tashi knew that there was never any other option for her. Three. The perfect number. Her own holy trinity to praise. Truly, they would be what she devoted herself to. She had won her battle, even though she’d never asked to fight it. She searched for Art’s hand to take in her own, and when her eyes met his they were fearful, yes, but delighted all the same. It was perfect. The ideal number. Her Joan, her Billie, her Natasha. He looked at that blurry image, all black and white fuzz and imagination-filled gaps, with the reverence of dog to owner, student to teacher. If they thought about it hard enough, they could feel their place in the world shifting. They could see each object come into itself, particle by particle. Each edge seemed a bit softer now. She felt a prayer on the tip of her tongue and silenced it with a sob. There was no time for piety. She felt the battle was won, and the war wasn’t even over.

Tashi was an analytical woman. Everything through a scrutinizing lens. Each detail perceived, judged, shuffled away to be dealt with. And as she analyzed the look on the doctor’s face when he came in, she knew. She knew and wanted to hear none of it. There was nothing to be done. No medication, no procedure. Her relief would come when they’d finally stop suffering. She didn’t tell Art, couldn’t tell Art. She didn’t tell him on the car ride home, tears stagnant in her waterline, lips pursed and trembling, but never breaking. She didn’t tell him when he saw the expression on her face. She didn’t have to. She needed space. Air. Sleep. A hug. A better body. A kinder God. She needed to be stronger. She needed to be weaker. When out of his line of vision, surrounded by the bed that could only have been where the lives still within her were born, she squeezed her eyes shut and hit. She hit, hit, hit and hoped it developed sentience just so it could feel the pain of each impact. But she wouldn’t lay there. She crumpled like an old flower, browning and dry, and for the first time in her life, there were no prayers to be said. She unclasped the thin gold chain from around her neck, holding its limp form in her palms. She cupped it beneath her lips, whispered ‘please, please, please’ until all that came out was air. But she felt no different. She felt no change. She threw it across the room, landing with a small, metallic tink. She hoped she’d been wrong all her life. There was no God. No God would let her suffer so much and be rewarded with so little. No kind, loving God would treat her this way after spending so much time praising him. No God would not let her serve the purpose she was put her for. Be fruitful and multiply. Why not her? They slept quietly that night, backs against each other. She slipped out from beneath the covers to scoop the chain up in her palms and tuck it into the drawer of her nightstand. Just in case, she didn’t want to anger him either.

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When those two lines did appear again, her thumbnail dragging up and down the length of them, she didn’t quite feel joy. Because it was never supposed to be her. Of course, she was happy, somewhere, beneath that clouded, murky water of grief. For her babies. For herself. For what ifs and should haves. But, she would take it. She would hold her girl proudly in her arms upon arrival, she would watch herself change, grow, widen, and not be horrified by such a thing, and she would hate this little girl as much as she loved her. She wouldn’t recycle a name. She couldn’t make this child identify as another. And she knew, as her mother had, that when she arrived, she’d just know who she was. For now, though, she made her way to her nightstand, slipped open the drawer, and connected the clasp of the chain behind her neck again.

hm.....................................

my theory….

AVAAAAAAAAAAA congratulations angel <3 thank you for putting in so much work to feed my brain with challengersisms. You deserve every bit of 600 and beyond

ava's 600 follower celebration bot drop!

wow, these milestones are flying by so quickly! thank you to every single person who has made this possible. i love all of you, so, so much, and there are not enough words to describe just how grateful i am.

i've received quite a few requests to make bots based on some of my fics, and while i have never made bots prior to this... how could i refuse any of you? without further ado, see below. i hope you enjoy :)

fics are linked to titles!

patrick zweig:

sun on the sidewalk bot

jitters and the vibe bot

art donaldson:

love me harder bot

until the tournament bot

tashi duncan:

let's be friends bot

tagging mutuals and taglist (so sorry if i miss you!): @cha11engers @soaraes @apatheticrater @guadagninolover @glennussy @cherrygirlfriend @peachyparkerr @jordiemeow @asheepinfrance @cybertink @misswrldd @lvve-talks @artspats @jesuistrestriste @empthy0 @slushfaerie @cursedfiles @tashism @grimsonandclover @gibsongirrl @dazedandconfusedlvr @patrickbtman @enterthebadlandss @newrochellechallenger2019 @mirclealignr @ghostgirl-22 @blastzachilles @voidsuites @roryheartz @happenssweet @diyasgarden @foralltheprettygirls @faistology @itsrensfairygardenn @stanart4clearskin @artstennisracket @ellaynaonsaturn @coolgrl111 @222col @kimmyneutron @babyspiderling @queensunshinee @hanneh69 @jamespotteraliveversion @awaywithtime @artdonaldsonbabygirl @soulxinxthexsky

No, Challengers (2024) does not have a train in it

Hello beautiful women in my phone

Zendaya for On: Zone Dreamers

Mmm life so beautiful

line cook!art donaldson headcanons ‎𐂐◯𓇋

line cook!art who lights his cigarette with the flames of the cooker before going out for his break and you think it's the hottest thing you've ever seen

line cook!art who always makes extra fries for you whenever it's on an order, sometimes you let him playfully feed you one

line cook!art who fucks you slow and tender, who loves nothing more than watching you slowly come undone on his cock

line cook!art who steals alcohol from the kitchen and the two of you share the bottle after a long shift

line cook!art who makes you a mean grilled cheese for breakfast when you wake up tangled in his sheets

line cook!art who deftly ties your hair up before you give him a blowjob, cracking jokes about 'health and safety'

line cook!art who after you sleep together, he always moves your tickets to the front of the line

line cook!art who has got a sleeper build and you only notice his arms when he's grabbing stuff from the back or leaning on the doorframe

line cook!art who doesn't eat anything on shift because he's 'only hungry for your pussy'

tags: @ellaynaonsaturn @blastzachilles

Josh O'Connor!!!!!!!!!!!