—female Rage

The Mechanics Of A Soul

spider-man meets his soulmate far before she ever gets to knows peter parker. soulmate au- at the age of 18, you can meet your soulmate. ty @gotkindabored bc u made this possibleee

Knowing her comes easy.

She taught him the meaning of a guilty pleasure.

Because that’s what this is, the way he swings up to her window, breathless and lacking in restraint, hungry eyes desperate to see the only person that can bring him any sort of peace.

She looks beautiful, of course. This is a constant, looking at her. She is a sort of lovely you can’t stop looking at, one that grows warmer and kinder the more you fall into it. He sees her through the window, like he always does, before he knocks. Her hair is tucked behind her ear, and she’s wearing the shorts she wears to bed, and she’s chewing on her lower lip nervously.

He knocks on her window twice, pauses and then knocks again. There’s no real reason to do their little ritual- she lives alone, and it’s not like anyone else would feasibly be at her window.

(He doesn’t like the thought of anyone else being there. Not one bit.)

But he knows there isn’t anyone else. Knows that he monopolizes her time in a way that if he was a better man, the guilt would have prevented him from coming over in the first place.

“Hey stranger,” she says. He wants to hate it, how her honey sweet drawl pulls him in. He wants it to be the magic, wants it to be the soulmate pull, but unfortunately for Peter’s will power, she seems to have a magnetic force of her own.

She doesn’t know his name.

“Hey to you too,” he says back, crawling through her window with, nimble body slipping through and sitting beside her on her bedspread.

He studies her face, a luxury she can’t indulge in.

“I missed you tonight,” her eyes are unwavering on him, and they’re heavy. It’s a weight he’s lucky to bear. “Were you safe out there?”

It’s a Friday night, and he knows she might be out with friends, might be with someone else right now, if it wasn’t for him. She picked this, to be here with him.

He wonders if she’d pick it if she knew him as more than Spider-Man.

“It was okay,” Peter replies, “I just got held up.”

By a bank robber, and yeah, he’s got a raging headache from the sirens, but he’s fine. He’s here.

“You look radiant,” he says, it’s so, so cheesy, but he’s looking at her and he can’t look away. She’s his favorite thing to look at.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, but she’s preening. It’s a little much, how much pride he feels from it.

He’s not wearing his regular suit- in fact, he looks a bit ridiculous. He swung over in sweatpants, a sweatshirt and the mask. It helps the whole thing feel more normal, like she didn’t meet her soulmate in a cafe being robbed.

It takes a couple of minutes, but they settle into their little groove- her laying on his chest, her little TV playing a show they binge together, his fingers running through her hair. It’s more peace than he ever imagined for himself.

He knows it. He knows she deserves more from the soul she was meant to love. And it doesn’t seem fair, that someone as kind as her has to love someone who can only give her half of himself.

Still, the night is young and she’s the love of his life, and this is more than he deserves.

The next time Peter sees her, he doesn’t have the mask on.

Of course, she doesn’t know who he is, and he’s planted to the ground, looking at her.

She’s fucking gorgeous. She looks like something out of a dream, and Peter wasn’t expecting to see the love of his life right now.

He should’ve checked the roster for the class he’s in, but he didn’t think to- he didn’t even know she went to the same university as he did.

He looks awful. Did he even do his hair this morning? She liked that actor with glasses, why the fuck didn’t he wear his glasses-

“Hey, you’re Peter, right?”

Peter.

He must look crazy right now, how he’s reacting to her saying his name- but she’s heard him say her name before. She’s never said his. He’s never heard the way it sounds, how her sweet tone wraps around the syllables, and he wants to hear it again.

“You know my name?”

“Do you mind if I sit here?” She asks, and he nods, faster than probably seems normal.

“Yeah, of course, go ahead.”

He’s talking too much.

“And yeah! We went to high school together. You took photos for yearbook, right?”

She knew who he was.

“Yeah,” he stammered back, “I did. I didn’t know you went to Midtown.”

Idiot.

“I think we ran in different circles,” she replies, “But it’s good to see you again.”

He was in her bed last night. He knows what shampoo she uses, knows how she feels pressed up against him, knows her heart like the back of his hand.

“It’s good to see you too.”

She giggles at that, and there it is, that burst of warmth in his chest. His girl.

And Peter doesn’t know if its their soul bond or just the fact that he’s in love with her, but the whole lecture (which he couldn’t tell you a thing about) is spent passing notes, genuine notes. Little scraps of paper, pieces of his heart on a line notebook.

It’s a waltz he told himself from day one that he’d never get to dance. Knowing her as Peter is scary. He can’t call her radiant. He isn’t a hero, isn’t even a particularly cool guy. He’s just in love.

She still smiles at his jokes, though.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he says, when he sneaks into her bedroom. This is routine, a pattern he adores, but this time it is different. She knows both versions of him. Not together, but she knows him.

She is of course, none the wiser. Her smile blooms like a rose, and he feels so selfish when she pulls him into an embrace. There’s a candle on, a dim lamp illuminating her beautiful face, and he shouldn’t be doing this.

It’s hedonistic. How can he be so greedy for her affection, take it as both versions of himself? It hardly seems fair.

“Are you okay?” her voice is muffled by his shirt, concern buried in her tone.

“I’m perfect,” he replies, “I’ve got you.”

It’s a delicate balance, and it doesn’t feel fair to her, but Peter is lucky.

It started simple enough, with them getting coffee after class, exchanging study details. Days slip into nights, hours into months, and she knows Peter. She knows him.

It’s easy with her. She loves the scent of vanilla and tells him about her favorite writers and Peter could spend years listening to her voice. And it’s not fair to her, to be two people, neither of which she can fully have.

A treacherous part of him wonders if she likes him as Peter.

Soulmates are one of those controversial things, but Peter- he had always wanted to meet his soulmate. He’d grown up watching Ben and May, how they danced to their favorite songs in the kitchen, how they seem to revolve around each other like oak trees, roots that had tangled together so much that separation seemed an improbable impossibility.

When he was a little boy, he wondered what his soulmate would be like. How would they look? Would they be kind? Would they want him back?

And god, she’s so much better than he could’ve ever imagined.

He never imagined he’d have to hide himself from her.

Gwen had left, and couldn’t blame her. She’d almost died, and it had scared her, and Peter- he knows that being with him is a flight risk, knows that loving him means a bit of self-sacrifice.

If he was a better man, he wouldn’t have gotten in this deep.

She’s his soulmate. There aren’t words to describe it, what it means to have her, what it means to be here, in the room with the other half of his heart.

He cannot risk it.

The tightrope walk had to end at some point, he supposes.

The liminal space finally ends on Saturday afternoon.

He’s Spider-Man to her, right now. It’s getting hard to keep track of what she knows about each version of him- he often almost slips, almost calls her darling when she can see his face.

“I have to ask you something.”

Peter knows what she is going to say before she opens her mouth.

There’s that sick feeling in his throat, the sense of dread.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s this guy in my class,” she says, and fuck, it’s like the world is in slow motion, like a bad movie, “And I think he likes me.”

Of course someone likes her. Of course they do. Liking her Is the natural succession of events after meeting her.

“Yeah?”

He wants to sound practiced. Poised. In control.

He doesn’t want to sound like he’s shaking, like the ground could fall out from under him at any given moment.

Like he’s about to lose the love of his life.

“It’s confusing for me, because you’re the only person I’ve ever felt this way around, and I didn’t I was able to feel this way around anyone else. You’re my soulmate.”

The term feels strange in Peter’s head, lulls around his mouth like a bitter candy. He normally loves that word. Carries the pride around like a limb, a piece of himself.

She’s right. She isn’t supposed to feel that way for anyone else. But anything’s possible, right?

He should say something. He knows he should. Except he can’t, feels like he’s going to choke on the too-thick air surrounding him.

It shouldn’t really be possible, Peter thinks to himself.

He’s supposed to be what she needs. He’s not supposed to have been able to mess this up.

“I see,” Peter replies, his voice isn’t loud enough. He should pull off his mask. He should say something. Anything. “Do you, uh, do you like him?”

He thinks back on it, nights where she plays music that sounds like if a fireplace embers had a more corporeal form, hours of time slipped into a space he never wished to leave.

It’s like watching a car crash. He’s just waiting for it to end.

He’d been naive.

She runs her hands through her hair, a nervous gesture he’s always been so endeared by, and this time, all it does is pull at the ache in his chest so much it almost tears it in half.

“His name is Peter.”

Oh. Oh.

It can’t be him.

“And he’s just- I don’t even know, he was in my class, and he’s my friend-“

“Photography class?”

He knows he sounds desperate, but he can’t care. And she’s closer to him, he can’t help it- she smells like roses and she’s looking up at him, wide doe eyes peering back at him. God, he’d do just about anything for her to mean it.

For her to have picked every version of him she’d know.

She nods, gingerly, and every breath feels like hope incarnate.

“Peter Parker?”

Realization blooms across her delicate features, and his heart beat’s so, so fast. Even still, she’s so close to him. He can feel her breath.

He’d pictured this moment before. Not that he ever believed it would come true, but in his more vulnerable moments of self indulgence, he would allow himself to consider what it would be like. He thought he’d get her flowers, propose some sort of affectation worthy of her time.

Loving her follows a rhythm, the beats of a song his soul had him dance to, until he could make the acquaintance of the woman he was meant to spend his life loving.

When she kisses him, arms wrapped around his waist, a helpless smile and an ardent urgency to her movements, far too late and still, always, just on time- he knows.

Every version of him was always going to end up here.

the right questions ⟶ True Detective Season 1: The Long Bright Dark ⟶ True Detective Night Country: Part 3

"Last night the commander told me not to sing 'The Hanging Tree' anymore. Too dark, he said. Too rebellious, more like it. I promised he'd never hear it from my lips again."

—The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 30

Interview with Melissa Broder, "Ask Polly and So Sad Today Talk About Feelings" // Miranda July, The First Bad Man // Giuseppe Molteni, The Confession

Ruth Madievsky, All-Night Pharmacy // Suzanne Scanlon, Promising Young Women // Robin Roe, A List of Cages // Hayao Miyazaki, Kiki's Delivery Service // Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 // D. H. Lawrence, The Plumbed Serpent // Jennifer S. Cheng, "So We Must Meet Apart" // Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart // Alice Oseman, Radio Silence // Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro in S4E02 of TRUE DETECTIVE

something that kills me about the hunger games is that they’re supposed to show that the capitol is necessary, that they keep people civilised because humans are inherently violent creatures and then the kids get to the arena and they care for each other. lamina mercy kills marcus, reaper gathers and covers their bodies, lucy gray stays with jessup as he dies, haymitch holds maysilee’s hand, katniss sings to rue and covers her in flowers, thresh lets katniss live, cato begs clove to come back to him, and katniss nurses peeta back to health. because these kids don’t want to kill each other. and it flies directly in the face of exactly what the hunger games stand for and still they do it. because people are good, there are just some who choose to do bad.

Miranda July, The First Bad Man

ARGENTINA. Buenos Aires. 1993. Stuart Franklin

on brothers