Speak to Me Softly
Shuri x POC reader
Summary: You avoid Shuri after an argument you had. A week after, you attend a street fighting tournament--something you promised her you wouldn't do again. When you come back home, you find Shuri waiting for you.
or
Shuri intends to confront you until you break down crying.
Word count: 1045
It’s late—way too late. You hope Shuri’s asleep, though you know her well enough to sense she isn’t.
Your hand hovers over the door handle as you think of what you’ll tell her if she asks…when she asks. You can lie. You can tell her that the bruises on your face came from a mugging, and the bruises on your knuckles came from fending them off.
No, that won’t work. And even if it did, you aren’t particularly fond of the Black Panther roaming your hometown stalking citizens she suspects as your fictional muggers.
The point is, you can’t tell her about the tournament; not when you promised her you would stop. But god, you were itching to go back into the ring, especially after the argument you had with Shuri a week ago.
The fight between you two ended up causing a lot more damage than expected. The things you told each other replay vividly in your head. The only thing you found distracting was the local boxing gym you went to only a few blocks away. One thing led to another and a buddy of yours convinced you to attend a match in an underground tournament. You were at your worst at this point. Shuri wasn't talking to you either. Perhaps part of you did this out of spite.
Now here you are holding your breath as you slowly open the door to your apartment. It’s dark inside. Quiet.
Maybe she is asleep.
Before you turn on the flashlight on your phone, the lamp switches on with Shuri seated on the couch next to it. Shit.
You keep your hood on and stuff your hands in the pockets of your hoodie, ensuring she doesn't see the brutal marks on your body that weren’t there when she last saw you.
Flicking your eyes to the ceiling, your shoulders sway to the kitchen.
“Sit.”
You purse your lips, eyeing the fridge. Orange juice sounds a lot better than another argument. “I’m thirsty,” you murmur.
“I’m sure you are.” She tilts her head to the couch. “Put your bag down and sit.”
With a clenched jaw, you prevent your girlfriend from repeating herself for the third time. You remove the duffel bag from your body, drop it where you stood, and join her on the couch while keeping the distance between the two of you. Your forearms sit on your thighs as you lean forward, training your eyes on the black television screen ahead of you.
“Look at me,” she demands. Not even a ‘where were you?’
Your head doesn’t turn. You sit there with bated breath, unsure what to do. Your fingers fidget with each other beneath your pocket. You wish you hadn’t come back.
You hear Shuri inhale deeply before she shifts closer to you. She lays a hand on your knee, gently but firmly pressing your leg down to cease its bouncing.
“Baby.” Her voice is soft this time. So soft. “Can you let me see your face? Please?”
Your vision starts to blur. You don’t know why.
Shuri pulls down your hoodie while using her other hand to rotate your face toward her.
“You went back,” she states instead of questions.
You continue to avoid her eyes. You don’t need to see them to know they’re hued with disappointment.
“You told me you wouldn’t.”
A tear rolls down your cheek. You were thinking of all these excuses—all the things you could say to prevent this conversation from happening, and yet not a lick of it could escape your tongue.
She whispers your name. “Look at me, please.”
You don’t want to. Your lips can’t help but pout as you stubbornly keep yourself from crying. You just beat the shit out of your opponent two hours ago, and now you were close to breaking down in front of your girlfriend.
Nonetheless, you reluctantly bring your tired eyes to hers. There’s nothing but undeserved love in her dark brown eyes.
Fuck. Here come the waterworks.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I know that I- that I promised you I wouldn’t,” you’re all sniffles at this point, “and that it’s not good for me, and I—”
Shuri caresses your cheek. “Breathe, my love.”
“I was just…” Breathe.
Your girlfriend nods, encouraging you to continue.
“I was just frustrated because of the…” you try to slow down. “Because of the fight we had.”
Shuri hums in response, wiping some of the wetness from your face.
“And I know it’s not an excuse. It’s- it’s not. But when we weren’t talking…I just,” your lips quiver, “I didn’t know what to do.”
Shuri leans her forehead against yours.
“I didn’t know what to do,” you murmur, mostly to yourself this time. “I’m sorry.”
Shuri removes your hands from your pockets. Leaning away, she inspects the swelling. She kisses your right knuckle.
“We’re gonna have to discuss this.”
You look down at your lap. Your pants are soaked in salty tears.
Shuri lifts your chin up. “But we’ll hold off for now. Okay?”
Your shoulders drop and all you do is nod childishly, exhaling.
Shuri’s eyes are glossy. She hates seeing you like this. That’s why she made you promise to stop street fighting in the first place.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Shuri lets you sit in the bathtub as she helps bathe you. Every few minutes she’ll kiss your cheek, your temple, or your lips to assure you she isn’t mad.
She’s frustrated, obviously. However, seeing you break was enough for her to pause. Until she realized how anxious you were, she intended on confronting you and talking about the argument from the other night.
And it wasn’t solely tonight. You avoided her all week before today, too ashamed to face her after the things you said during your fight—too sad to face her after the things she told you.
Shuri wrings out the washcloth, observing you as you sit in thought. Your face always tattles on your feelings; a blessing and a curse.
“Did you win?” She asks, pulling you out of your head.
You look at her, eyebrows raised. “Hm?”
She smiles, pecking your lips. “Did you win, my love?”
You huff out a chuckle.
“Yeah.” You rub your nose against hers. “I won.”
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So Al post always have to make sure she the centre of attention on Ms big night which doesn't come as a shock in that photo michael look tense and stiff and where the smile it exactly same as the other he pulls when he with her georgia one on seems more general and supportive of her friend and husband best friend then his actual parter
Would love to hear ur thoughts on this one
Hi there! Well, my DMs have been blowing up all afternoon about these various posts, and...yeah. A lot to unpack here, for sure.
It's interesting to see the use of two very different pictures here--one posed, one a candid pic/selfie--and how that frames everything else that is going on, and highlights several contrasts that are much too great to ignore.
Perhaps the most significant contrast is that in the posed photo, Michael and AL are barely touching, and the photographer seems to have made the choice not to pose them like a couple. There is also no apparent "pull" that is unconsciously bringing them together, in spite of whatever direction they might've been given. In the picture of Michael and David, however, not only are they sitting very close together, but that "pull" is readily visible, and you can see them leaning/melting into each other without any effort. So that by itself on a foundational, fundamental level puts these pictures into two very different places.
The second aspect of the contrast--again, in my opinion--is the impersonal nature of Anna's post vs. Georgia's. Anna is posting a Getty Images picture with a watermark with another generic "Darling" caption (the same as she did in another post when the first episode of The Way aired a few weeks ago). At this point it feels, as @invisibleicewands previously described, akin to a "Best regards" at the end of an e-mail. And again, it's not only a photo shoot pic instead of a personal one--an especially strange choice given that Michael has repeatedly talked about how much he hates photo shoots--but a shot where Michael looks stiff and so uncharacteristically subdued.
In the picture Georgia posted, we see that twinkle in his eye, how relaxed he looks, full of that life and joy that we've come to so strongly associate with Michael, and it makes it even more stark how absent that is from the second picture. And further adding to all of this is what you mentioned, about AL centering herself/how she and Michael look in this post, as opposed to the opening of the play.
If we had any doubts about this, Anna seems to have taken the point home this with the story she posted immediately following this one:
For those who may not know, this is a photo from the show Schitt's Creek, of the actors who play the main family (special shout-out to Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy, my loves). I have not actually seen the show, so I can't attest to anything specific about the characters' personalities, but it appears this is who AL thinks she and Michael look like. I would say, though, that what is apparent to me is that Anna's priority in posting that first Insta story was the aesthetic/the picture, rather than celebrating Michael or the opening night of the play. Putting these two things together, Michael almost seems like the smallest part of the post, which is an odd thing to do when tonight is the opening night of his play.
And this again wildly contrasts with Georgia's post, where the picture is merely a vehicle for something much deeper, and much more meaningful. Just the positioning of the word "Michael" at the center of the picture is a visual cue that lets us know what this post is about, and this is further augmented by the caption for all of the reasons I enumerated here. I also can't help thinking that there was a reason that a picture of Michael and David was used--not a picture of Michael by himself, and not a picture of Michael and Georgia--and given that this Insta story was posted after AL's, it makes me wonder if that was a deliberate choice, for multiple reasons...
So yes, those are my thoughts on these two Insta stories/pictures from today. I'm definitely interested to see what posts or pictures we might get following tonight's performance/press night (and fingers crossed that David actually made it to the show this time). Also glad as always to hear from my followers about your take on these posts. Thanks for writing in! x
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