i’ll bandage up your body and your bones and your bad days too | 5.6k, teen
fill for @badthingshappenbingo—kick them while they are down
“Hey, pretty boy,” he says, softly, and reaches in to wipe off a stray tear and drip of snot.
Eddie rolls his eyes and laughs, thick and nasty, because he knows he’s not pretty right now, red-faced and wild-eyed and wet with tears, wet with snot and spit and sweat and all sorts of other things, but Buck really, truly, thinks so. He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t.
“Hi.”
Buck’s smile widens. “Wanna scoot over and let me in?” he asks, ducking down so he can meet Eddie’s eyes. Eddie nods and scrambles to move, sliding over just enough for Buck to squeeze in and then slumping against his wide chest. Buck shuts the door, wraps his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and kisses his forehead. He smells like smoke and Hen’s fruity lotion. “You’re burning up, baby.”
Eddie nods, hiccups, and says nothing.
Buck brings his other arm around to hold Eddie closer, tighter. “You said you were feeling better,” he says, whispery-soft, as he combs Eddie’s damp hair off his forehead. “Why’d you lie to me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Why do you think I’d worry?”
“‘Cause I’m having a bad day,” Eddie answers, shrugging, and nestles in further, like he can crawl inside Buck’s body and spread himself out along Buck’s bones, where he’s warm and wet and welcome, forever and always. “‘Cause I have a cold and everything hurts and nothing feels good except—except this. Except you.”
The tension in Eddie’s body sweeps out as quick as it came, leaving him boneless and unsecured and held in Buck’s arms, against Buck’s big chest and even bigger heart where he belongs, where he was born to be. It’s the one place that’s his and nobody else’s, ever again.
A tear falls, hot like fire, and he snuffles, wiping his face across Buck’s t-shirt.
read the rest on ao3
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humble offer of an au instead of (a continuation of) divorced zukka
Zuko fakes his death:
Someone's been trying to assassinate him. It's long after Sokka leaves, and they aren't together. Maybe they had something once, and Sokka always thought they'd end up together, but they aren't together. And he hears word of the fire lord's death all the way back in the water tribe. How there was nothing the Kyoshi Warriors or the palace guard could do, and he was killed.
There are no remains.
He goes to the funeral, and it's this big dramatic ordeal (because they're trying to really hammer in that he's "dead") and Sokka's a mess. A complete and utter mess. He can barely function, and he's angry, especially at Suki, because he doesn't understand how she isn't more upset (she knows Zuko's still alive. She tries to talk to him, but he pushes her away, and they're never able to talk in a private place.) But more than that, he's angry with himself. Because if he hadn't left, he could have saved him. He could have been there. He thought they had a future together, that they couldn't be together now, but someday they would, and that all goes up in smoke.
And then Zuko's alive. They were able to apprehend the mastermind with the guise, and Sokka should be happy, but all he feels is emotions he can't understand. He feels betrayed.
"You were in the water tribe," Zuko said. "I couldn't tell you--"
"You died. You were dead. I-I went to your funeral, I mourned you."
And he wants to be angry, he wants to hit him, to make him feel a fraction of the pain he felt, but he can't hurt him, not ever, and the only thing he can do is crumble at his feet because Zuko is alive.
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episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.
kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.
taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).
in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level).
kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.
taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him.
both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand.
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What's your place in the royal court?
The Knight.
a defender, strong as stone, you make it a mission to defend. never would you turn your back on those in need; valorous, a paragon, a sword raised in battle with a cry on your lips... but, be warned, noble knight, that you do not fall to the sword, yourself. are these ideals worth dying for?
Tagged by : @oceansfirst
Tagging: WHOEVER! YOU! (if you haven't done it yet! <3 )
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How do you best like to be loved?
LAUGH WITH ME LONG AND LOVING
jokes are simple and easy to comprehend, and laughter helps with all that tension in your belly. you just want a break from the other stuff, and if someone makes you laugh, then that means that they care, in some way, about your happiness. especially, if, after making you laugh the once, they try and do it again. if laughter is the greatest medicine, then you can share it and no one has to be sick. it is contagious, and free to give and receive. there is never too much of it. there is never too much of you. i hope when you laugh you speak it from your belly. that you use your muscles and let it fill the room. that you know the sound rings like a bell and is lovely. i hope that when you smile you show your teeth.
Tagged by: @oceansfirst
Tagging: ALL OF YOU! Do the thing and then tag me in it so I can see!
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