Post by newwwwusername on Feb 11, 2023 0:55:13 GMT
Full title on AO3 : Yeah, I Wish I'd Been A, Wish I'd Been A Teen, Teen Idle
Title from : Teen Idle by MARINA
Chronology : Pre-canon
Additional warnings : Bulimia, depression, religious commentary, self-hatred, implied child abuse, violent thoughts, the f slur
Headcanons : Depressed!Noel, Bulimic!Noel, Noel has ADHD, Atheist!Noel
I wanna be a bottle blonde. I don't know why, but I feel conned
Noel's life had always felt too small. He always felt too small. In his dreams, he'd always lived a rough life, but he found a sick joy in the roughness. His reality had always felt so boring and formulaic in comparison, and he just held onto the hope that one day, he'd be free of Uranium City and could move to France to live out his fantasies.
I wanna be an idle teen. I wish I hadn't been so clean
In his life, Noel had never drunk alcohol.
He'd never kissed a man (or anyone, for that matter).
He'd never dressed up as Lola Lola for Halloween.
There was a lot of stuff he hadn't done, and he grew to hate himself for it. He hated how he allowed himself to grow so miserable. How he never dared to be his true, whole self, even around his friends. How troublemakers like Mischa went to the same school as him but he was too afraid of disappointing his mother to mimic such chaos.
I wanna stay inside all day. I want the world to go away
If it were up to him, he would've slept all day, every day, until he eventually withered away into nothing.
Depression ruled his emotions, keeping him in a constant state of apathy, and his unfulfilling life only worsened this feeling. His mom had tried to get him on medication to treat his depression, but he could never remember to take them consistently.
I want blood, guts, and chocolate cake
Noel had many violent thoughts but never dared act them out. Maybe it was the apathy. Maybe it was his moral compass. He hardly cared.
He also stopped celebrating his birthday after the age of ten, because he knew that no one he invited would come anyway.
I wanna be a real fake
He was always "fake" in the sense that he wore a mask to protect himself, but he was never a real fake.
He was never the badass manipulator he thought of himself as, afraid he'd miss the sweet balance that made people admire all the shitty "girlboss" characters in media and just wind up a douchebag.
I wanna be a virgin pure. A twenty-first-century whore
His teachers all preached about virginity. About how sex before marriage was a sin and how the only way to get to Heaven was to stay "pure"
Truthfully, Noel didn't believe in any of that God stuff. He only endured it because his mother begged him to and because Saint Cassian offered good academic and extracurricular opportunities.
Still, in his dreams, he was a hooker. A whore who slept around with any and every man who'd give him the time.
He couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty over such fantasies.
I wanna drink until I ache. I wanna make a big mistake
He wanted to get completely shitfaced. He wanted to get in some kind of altercation, too drunk to care about the consequences. He wanted to kiss a man while everyone could see and have someone cause an issue over it. He wanted to do some shit that'd get him arrested.
He never dared to get himself in such trouble, though.
I want blood, guts, and angel cake
Every time his birthday rolled around, he contemplated celebrating by making it everyone's problem.
He'd show up to school out of uniform, dressed in drag, with a big bucket of pig's blood and guts to pour over the heads of his cruelest bullies, reverse-Carrie style. He'd go to the culinary building and hold all the culinary kids hostage until they made him the perfect birthday cake. Then he'd force Ocean to sing him "Happy Birthday", chastising her over every little imperfection in her performance, like she always did to him.
He always chickened out and let his birthday pass without incident.
I'm gonna puke it anyway
Noel struggled off and on with bulimia since he was in middle school.
Whenever the lack of control over his circumstances grew to be too frustrating, he'd take back control through his eating- Consuming massive amounts of food and then forcing it all back up, as if to tell his body I choose what stays
It took a toll on his health, but no one noticed.
I wish I wasn't such a narcissist
Noel hated how he only ever seemed to focus on how bad his life felt. Just looking at the other choir kids alone, Mischa and Ricky easily had been dealt worse cards than he had.
He always paraded himself around as 'the only gay guy in Uranium City', but he had no way of knowing if that was true or not- Maybe he just wanted to feel special.
(He definitely just wanted to feel special, but he was too proud to admit it)
I wish I didn't really kiss the mirror when I'm on my own
He never kissed anyone in his life, but he still practiced nightly on the mirror, hoping that the practice would make an eventual first kiss the best in the world.
He felt embarrassed every time he cleaned the mirror.
Oh God, I'm gonna die alone
He always believed he'd die alone.
At least that part wasn't true.
Adolescence didn't make sense. A little loss of innocence
Realizing he was gay bordered on one of the only traumatizing experiences in his life because it went against everything he'd been brainwashed into believing.
It's also what made him realize he didn't actually believe in God, though he couldn't express that to anyone.
The ugliness of being a fool
For as much as he fantasized about living a miserable life full of bad experiences, you'd think he'd get that same sick enjoyment from how bad he felt about himself, but you'd be wrong.
He was a fool for thinking misery would make him happy because he was miserable, but he was anything but happy.
Ain't youth meant to be beautiful?
He was supposed to make mistakes. To learn. To grow. That's what his mother had always told him. That's what all the other adults in his life had always told him.
He couldn't help feeling as though he was failing childhood and he knew it was something he'd regret when he was older. Hell, he already regretted it.
Youth was supposed to be a beautiful, messy process.
His youth was a constant standstill.
Yeah, I wish I'd been, I wish I'd been a teen, teen idle. Wish I'd been a prom queen fighting for the title
He wondered what it would be like to be one of the cool kids, or at least to have the confidence of one.
He wished he would've run for homecoming court. For prom king. For student council. For anything.
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a Bible
The closest thing Noel ever got to being the wreckless fuck-up he dreamt of being was when he'd burn his Bible at the end of each semester.
Saint Cassian students were given a new Bible each semester so they could always do Bible study with a fresh copy. Most students still kept their old copies (some out of genuine love for the book, others out of fear of what God might do if they disposed of it).
Not Noel, though.
No, at the end of each semester, he'd dump out all the old papers from his backpack into a trash bin, light them on fire, and toss in his Bible.
Feeling super, super, super suicidal
Another one of Noel's frequent fantasies was killing himself.
Sometimes, he imagined making a big display of the act, 13 Reasons Why style with a guilt-trippy note and everything.
Other times, he just wanted to run away and jump into the nearest ocean without a word of notice.
He'd never act on it, though, if for no other reason than not wanting to be remembered as 'the faggot who took the easy way out'
The wasted years. The wasted youth
He'd wasted away what were supposed to be the best years of his life by dwelling on what could've been.
He'd never get those years back. He'd never get his childhood back. That would surely haunt him forever
The pretty lies. The ugly truth
He was happy!
No, he wasn't.
And the day has come where I have died
He didn't think much of it when he got on the Cyclone ride with the other choir kids. Sure, it looked sketchy, but this was the most fun he'd had in a while.
So, even when the screeching started, the smile didn't leave his face.
Only to find I've come alive
Title from : Teen Idle by MARINA
Chronology : Pre-canon
Additional warnings : Bulimia, depression, religious commentary, self-hatred, implied child abuse, violent thoughts, the f slur
Headcanons : Depressed!Noel, Bulimic!Noel, Noel has ADHD, Atheist!Noel
I wanna be a bottle blonde. I don't know why, but I feel conned
Noel's life had always felt too small. He always felt too small. In his dreams, he'd always lived a rough life, but he found a sick joy in the roughness. His reality had always felt so boring and formulaic in comparison, and he just held onto the hope that one day, he'd be free of Uranium City and could move to France to live out his fantasies.
I wanna be an idle teen. I wish I hadn't been so clean
In his life, Noel had never drunk alcohol.
He'd never kissed a man (or anyone, for that matter).
He'd never dressed up as Lola Lola for Halloween.
There was a lot of stuff he hadn't done, and he grew to hate himself for it. He hated how he allowed himself to grow so miserable. How he never dared to be his true, whole self, even around his friends. How troublemakers like Mischa went to the same school as him but he was too afraid of disappointing his mother to mimic such chaos.
I wanna stay inside all day. I want the world to go away
If it were up to him, he would've slept all day, every day, until he eventually withered away into nothing.
Depression ruled his emotions, keeping him in a constant state of apathy, and his unfulfilling life only worsened this feeling. His mom had tried to get him on medication to treat his depression, but he could never remember to take them consistently.
I want blood, guts, and chocolate cake
Noel had many violent thoughts but never dared act them out. Maybe it was the apathy. Maybe it was his moral compass. He hardly cared.
He also stopped celebrating his birthday after the age of ten, because he knew that no one he invited would come anyway.
I wanna be a real fake
He was always "fake" in the sense that he wore a mask to protect himself, but he was never a real fake.
He was never the badass manipulator he thought of himself as, afraid he'd miss the sweet balance that made people admire all the shitty "girlboss" characters in media and just wind up a douchebag.
I wanna be a virgin pure. A twenty-first-century whore
His teachers all preached about virginity. About how sex before marriage was a sin and how the only way to get to Heaven was to stay "pure"
Truthfully, Noel didn't believe in any of that God stuff. He only endured it because his mother begged him to and because Saint Cassian offered good academic and extracurricular opportunities.
Still, in his dreams, he was a hooker. A whore who slept around with any and every man who'd give him the time.
He couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty over such fantasies.
I wanna drink until I ache. I wanna make a big mistake
He wanted to get completely shitfaced. He wanted to get in some kind of altercation, too drunk to care about the consequences. He wanted to kiss a man while everyone could see and have someone cause an issue over it. He wanted to do some shit that'd get him arrested.
He never dared to get himself in such trouble, though.
I want blood, guts, and angel cake
Every time his birthday rolled around, he contemplated celebrating by making it everyone's problem.
He'd show up to school out of uniform, dressed in drag, with a big bucket of pig's blood and guts to pour over the heads of his cruelest bullies, reverse-Carrie style. He'd go to the culinary building and hold all the culinary kids hostage until they made him the perfect birthday cake. Then he'd force Ocean to sing him "Happy Birthday", chastising her over every little imperfection in her performance, like she always did to him.
He always chickened out and let his birthday pass without incident.
I'm gonna puke it anyway
Noel struggled off and on with bulimia since he was in middle school.
Whenever the lack of control over his circumstances grew to be too frustrating, he'd take back control through his eating- Consuming massive amounts of food and then forcing it all back up, as if to tell his body I choose what stays
It took a toll on his health, but no one noticed.
I wish I wasn't such a narcissist
Noel hated how he only ever seemed to focus on how bad his life felt. Just looking at the other choir kids alone, Mischa and Ricky easily had been dealt worse cards than he had.
He always paraded himself around as 'the only gay guy in Uranium City', but he had no way of knowing if that was true or not- Maybe he just wanted to feel special.
(He definitely just wanted to feel special, but he was too proud to admit it)
I wish I didn't really kiss the mirror when I'm on my own
He never kissed anyone in his life, but he still practiced nightly on the mirror, hoping that the practice would make an eventual first kiss the best in the world.
He felt embarrassed every time he cleaned the mirror.
Oh God, I'm gonna die alone
He always believed he'd die alone.
At least that part wasn't true.
Adolescence didn't make sense. A little loss of innocence
Realizing he was gay bordered on one of the only traumatizing experiences in his life because it went against everything he'd been brainwashed into believing.
It's also what made him realize he didn't actually believe in God, though he couldn't express that to anyone.
The ugliness of being a fool
For as much as he fantasized about living a miserable life full of bad experiences, you'd think he'd get that same sick enjoyment from how bad he felt about himself, but you'd be wrong.
He was a fool for thinking misery would make him happy because he was miserable, but he was anything but happy.
Ain't youth meant to be beautiful?
He was supposed to make mistakes. To learn. To grow. That's what his mother had always told him. That's what all the other adults in his life had always told him.
He couldn't help feeling as though he was failing childhood and he knew it was something he'd regret when he was older. Hell, he already regretted it.
Youth was supposed to be a beautiful, messy process.
His youth was a constant standstill.
Yeah, I wish I'd been, I wish I'd been a teen, teen idle. Wish I'd been a prom queen fighting for the title
He wondered what it would be like to be one of the cool kids, or at least to have the confidence of one.
He wished he would've run for homecoming court. For prom king. For student council. For anything.
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a Bible
The closest thing Noel ever got to being the wreckless fuck-up he dreamt of being was when he'd burn his Bible at the end of each semester.
Saint Cassian students were given a new Bible each semester so they could always do Bible study with a fresh copy. Most students still kept their old copies (some out of genuine love for the book, others out of fear of what God might do if they disposed of it).
Not Noel, though.
No, at the end of each semester, he'd dump out all the old papers from his backpack into a trash bin, light them on fire, and toss in his Bible.
Feeling super, super, super suicidal
Another one of Noel's frequent fantasies was killing himself.
Sometimes, he imagined making a big display of the act, 13 Reasons Why style with a guilt-trippy note and everything.
Other times, he just wanted to run away and jump into the nearest ocean without a word of notice.
He'd never act on it, though, if for no other reason than not wanting to be remembered as 'the faggot who took the easy way out'
The wasted years. The wasted youth
He'd wasted away what were supposed to be the best years of his life by dwelling on what could've been.
He'd never get those years back. He'd never get his childhood back. That would surely haunt him forever
The pretty lies. The ugly truth
He was happy!
And the day has come where I have died
He didn't think much of it when he got on the Cyclone ride with the other choir kids. Sure, it looked sketchy, but this was the most fun he'd had in a while.
So, even when the screeching started, the smile didn't leave his face.
Only to find I've come alive